Embracing chaos
This series combines both the sciences and art through exploring chaos, or specifically embracing chaos. I wanted to convey this by combining mathematical flows dealing with chaos theory with a visual representation of an embrace.
Chaos theory deals with surprises and the unpredictability of events. It focuses on patterns in dynamic systems that are highly sensitive to their initial conditions. Two states that start extremely close will quickly evolve very differently.
This behaviour can be represented using plots known as ‘Strange Attractors’, plots that have inspired the shapes of the flows seen in the paintings.
All states are naturally tending towards chaos, and embracing this can help teach us how to deal with the unexpected and how to cope with life’s changes and uncertainties.
"All states are naturally tending towards chaos, and embracing this can help teach us how to deal with the unexpected and how to cope with life’s changes and uncertainties."
03
Through the Chaos I
41x31cm
Acrylic on canvas
04
Through the Chaos II
41x31cm
Acrylic on canvas
05
Through the Chaos III
41x31cm
Acrylic on canvas
The flows seen in the paintings above have been inspired by strange attractors. The specific attractors that helped inform those seen in 'Flow With It' and 'Let It Happen' were the Halvorsen Attractor and Lorenz Attractor respectively. The Lorenz Attractor is the most well known of these, and is created from a set of equations used to model atmospheric convention, or more simply, the weather. It demonstrates that a small changes in the initial conditions of a system can have huge changes of the outcome of events later in time.
In popular media this sort of behaviour has been described as the butterfly effect. Coincidently the actual flow produced can be seen to resemble the shape of a butterfly.