Madame Entropy - Meredith TrombleMeredith Tromble

Madame Entropy is a persona who began participating, unannounced, in my public lectures about contemporary art. She is intent on transmitting knowledge about art that doesn’t fit into words. Madame Entropy takes “lecture” into unfamiliar territory, using an interplay of image, text, speech, and gesture to unsettle the experiences of “learning” and “knowing.” The format carries her message, embodying the dynamic relationship between theory and practice. She can be identified by her yellow gloves and citrine earrings.

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Above: A moment from Electricity in the Air, 2013.

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About Madame Entropy

Madame Entropy (2011- ongoing), lecture/performance series

Madame Entropy emerged over the course of three public lectures: “Does Art Produce Knowledge” (2011) at the Townsend Center of the University of California, Berkeley (UCB); “Images Outrun Theory” (2012) at the Berkeley Center for New Media, UCB, and “Electricity in the Air: A personal account of electronic arts and the transformation of art practice,” the 2012 Gale Memorial Lecture at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

At first, I didn’t realize what was happening; I was just visited with a strong sense that a lecture could be made in a different way. To the images and spoken text, I added gestural and physical subtexts that were relevant but not directly explanatory. As I worked on “Electricity in the Air,” Madame Entropy came into view and told me her name.

Video

Nothing Means Anything. To preserve an edge of surprise for Madame Entropy’s work, her appearances are mostly undocumented. But she did participate in Nothing Means Anything, my 2013 artist’s talk at the San Francisco Art Institute, as shown in this video.