Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

Not all the data received by our 5 senses and processed by our brains as objectively real events necessarily transmits information to us. For instance, is information transmitted to the listener of music? What does he learn from it that he didn't know before? Does art relay information to the viewer? Poetry? Fictional literature and film? Sports? Playing games? Pornography? How much in fact of our perceptual experience is tied up with the simple creation of qualitative experiences for their own sake? The skilled stimulation of a purely aesthetically-based experience of no practical value whatsoever. Consciousness experienced for its own sake, as fundamental and of innate worth as life itself.

In information theory, information is defined as a reduction in uncertainty. So only a sensory message that is redundant or completely predictable carries no new information. As long as there is some amount of entropy, in the form of uncertainty, there is new information.

Good art, in any medium, does convey information. We know it is such because in elicits new thoughts or feelings in us. In some cases, old art, contextualized by the current setting or emotional circumstances, can even be new again.