See The Artwork as a System and its Aesthetic Experience by Hans Dieter Huber for a fascinating analysis of Beuys' art in the context of general systems theory. According to Huber, Beuys' work is especially adaptive to systems theory not only because of the basic system operative in Beuys' works--elements and objects and their relational links, but also because it accounts for the environment as an entity equal to that of the system itself. The "environment" as constituted by viewer-object relations allows for an artwork's "aesthetic effectiveness." The perception of an artwork by a viewer--the meaning that an artwork has in a viewer's mind--plays a role in such a system. This is essentially a variant of literary theory known as "reader response" theory.

See Hypetext in Hypertext for more on reader response theory and other critical theory as it intersects with hypertext and hypermedia.