Landauer's Principle is a physical principle proposed by Rolf Landauer in 1961 that establishes the idea that information is physical. It is presented as a key scientific insight for understanding the relationship between information, computation, and thermodynamics. Its central claim is that the erasure of information is not a purely abstract logical operation: it necessarily involves physical energy consumption and an increase in entropy.
This applies to logically irreversible operations. When one bit of information is erased, a minimum amount of heat must be released into the surrounding environment. This minimum is called the Landauer limit and is expressed as Q ≥ k_B T ln 2, where k_B is the Boltzmann constant and T is the absolute temperature of the environment. The principle therefore shows that deleting data in digital systems is not a return to “nothing,” but a transformation into physical heat and entropy.
Landauer’s Principle is also connected to digital materialism, which treats computers not as abstract processing devices but as physical materials. In that framing, the principle becomes important for artistic practices that visualize or sonify irreversible destruction and erasure, including self-destructive art and works that expose the thermodynamic traces left by data loss. Landauer’s Principle is best understood as a foundational concept linking information theory, physical reality, and the thermodynamic cost of deletion.