In the columns we are opening we are attempting to define, within the measure of the possible, terms which have acquired a wider circulation in art criticism. We say "within the measure of the possible", since the problem of definition is a permanently open one. For the terms which are defined in several ways, we have sought to present the most broadly spread acceptions.
The terms included in the first chapters of the "Glossary" have been selected from the terminology used in informational aesthetics . This aesthetics describes an art which incorporates cybernetic models; the artistic object which it proposes is, schematically speaking, resulting from (produced by) the setting into action and interaction of certain actual systems understanding: feasible, at least theoretically, if. not technologically too. Such a preoccupation necessarily implies, 
simultaneously with the analysis of the systems, also that of structures. For that reason. from among the many meanings of a notion, we will choose those which are needed in informational analysis and we will exclude the meanings which these notions have in other fields of applications.