Dactyl Foundation presents: John Ashbery, James Crutchfield, Angus Fletcher, Joan Richardson, moderated by Victoria N. Alexander, installation by Neil Grayson.
In history, chaos is anarchy, mutability, disorder, chance, indeterminacy, flux, non-linearity, entropy,
irrational thought, creativity, destructive emotion and the primal source of all that is.
Chaos: panel
April 4-6, 2000
This event is part of the Dactyl Foundation Retrodiction Project.
John Ashbery is author of numerous poetry collections, including Flow Chart, Hotel Lautréamont, Some Trees, The Tennis Court Oath, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, and System. He is recipient of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Robert Frost Medal, Poetry Society of America, Gold Medal for Poetry, American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is Chancellor, Academy of American Poets, Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College.
Jim Crutchfield is a physicist and Research Professor at Santa Fe Institute. One of the original investigators of "deterministic chaos," Crutchfield studies pattern and complexity in nature, focusing on the processes by which we perceive regularity and distinguish it from disorder. He is also involved in the arts. He recently helped found the Art and Science Laboratory in Santa Fe and lectures on aesthetics and complexity in conjunction with the Santa Fe Art Institute. He was the scientific advisor on the San Francisco Exploratorium's exhibition series "Turbulent Landscapes" in which artists were commissioned to create interactive sculptures from natural complex and chaotic systems. Turbulent Landscapes is currently touring the nation's science museums.
Angus Fletcher, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at English at the Graduate School and Lehman College, CUNY, is a leading authority on allegory, Edmund Spenser, the literature of nature, and postmodernisms. His published works include: Allegory: Theory of a Symbolic Mode; The Prophetic Moment: An Essay on Spenser and Colors of Mind.
Joan Richardson, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Graduate School, CUNY, and Executive Officer of the Ph.D. program in English. She specializes in American Literature and the Philosophy of Science. She is co-editor (with Frank Kermode) of the Library of America Wallace Stevens edition and author of the definitive Wallace Stevens biography.