Butterfly

2010

video projection onto an image on a mirror (video loop, 3′)
mirror (110 x 110 cm), foil covering, projection and reflected light
variable dimensions
sound composition: Scanner – Robin Rimbaud

The video installation Butterfly uses radiological images of the author’s brain responding to different colors. The image of a butterfly changing colors is formed by a light reflection of a video that is being projected onto a horizontal image on a mirror. It alludes to the concept of the “butterfly effect”, which in chaos theory posits that slight, even infinitesimally small variations in the initial conditions of a dynamic system may produce extreme and unpredictable results in other space and time coordinates: that a butterfly flapping its wings could set off a hurricane on the other side of the planet. The shape on the mirror is a graphically processed image of my brain; the butterfly reflection is a metaphor for the power of our “invisible” thoughts, our emotions, our so-called mental worlds, conscious or unconscious, that keep changing the physical reality surrounding us. Butterfly deals with the interconnectedness of the visible and the invisible and questions the causal relations between the perceptible and the intelligible.

(Collaboration: prof. dr. Blaž Koritnik, Andrej Sirnik, Clinical Institute of Radiology, University Medical Center Ljubljana)