[Flu.tu.re]

[Flu.tu.re] is a crossover ongoing R&d project that covers different disciplines, techniques, ideas, …, with different collaborators. The starting point are butterflies and how to map butterflies’ flight trajectory in 3d. One of the questions is wether the flight trajectory can be seen as a notation (system?).  Inspiration is drawn from Kathrin Peters book “The aesthetics of Notation” (2009).

When, at the end of the 19th century, the physiologist Etienne-Jules Marey developed his graphic method, it had nothing to do with art. Marey’s focus was the movement of bird’s wings or the human pulse rate but these movements could only be seen by breaking them down into moments, lines, curves and diagrams. This transformation was only made possible with the help of technical equipment, and this equipment produced images – graphs an chronophotography – which could not only be studied but also shown to the public. For the curators, Hubertus von Amelunxen, Dieter Appelt, Angela Lammert and Peter Weibel therefore, Marey is akin to a chief witness of notation: his methods demonstrate how techniques of visualisation and duplication not only generate knowledge but also set forms of images into circulation. This is the process described by the photographic historian, Michel Frizot, in the substantial and informative catalogue that accompanies the show. Its cover features one of Marey’s diagrams that demonstrates a horse’s gait. Of course the black and white block diagram shows no indication of any actual horses – and you would be forgiven for mistaking it for a musical score, a dance notation, the plans for a housing estate, or an abstract drawing.

[Flu.tu.re] also plays with uncertainty, and more specifically with the infamous Butterfly Effect , a principle which states that small business within certain sensitive systems could have major consequences. The name is based on a metaphor that was used in 1961 by Edward Lorenz in order to indicate that the wings of a butterfly in Brazil months later, may be causing a tornado in Texas . The butterfly effect also plays a huge role in chaos theory.