No closed systems and the measurement of novelty — an information-theoretic instrument for discriminating origination from transmission.
A closed finite system is eventually periodic: it originates nothing once its transient ends. Sustained novelty needs an open channel, and the rate it can carry is bounded by the channel's capacity.
The instrument separates transmission — what a system conducts from outside — from origination — what it makes itself — and reads each against a null that can fail. The film walks the thread; the essay proves it.