{"id":30905,"title":"The Butterfly Effect","description":"The Red Admiral Butterfly (Vanessa Atalanta) a drawing and gentle reference, from Graphene to the James Webb Space Telescope, a journey through hexagons.","content":"

\"nr8ddmkaznswimxy9cvxizxx46bywqvwqecuwg6wbpcmkpsq.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"The Red Admiral Butterfly (Vanessa Atalanta) is part of my occasional Invertebrate Collection<\/u><\/a> that punctuates my usual bird obsession, when I recently I saw an image of a red admiral butterfly online, I bemoaned the fact that I rarely see them in East London. Later that day I went on some errands and there on Hackney Road a red admiral butterfly swooped down to my shoulder and floated alongside me for a while. I was amazed at the coincidence and realised that the universe had decided my next subject for me. \u00a0<\/p>

\"b3wmsbralwu9me0acnq47lqixfehqnb6lzq0lfddnkodajlm.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"And so began my usual process, I searched for images and videos online and was lucky enough to see more red admirals over the next few days and knelt to study them, it seemed that they were following me. It\u2019s recently been confirmed by Butterfly Conservation<\/u><\/a> that there has been a 400% increase in the population of the red admiral this summer in the UK, and is a more likely explanation for my encounters, than their pursuit of me. One would assume this is good news, alas it seems that this is another example of the impact of climate change. The butterfly usually summers in the UK flying over from mainland Europe in the spring, warmer winter months have allowed the butterfly to overwinter in the UK. The impact of this change in behaviour on biodiversity is yet to be determined.<\/p>

\"jburg4vnvxnnybi8odlilssr4x3y99abi1povgqsnlaqnbda.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"As usual I drew my subject first to get a sense of what the gentle reference would consist of. I was fascinated by their eyes, despite the fact I was unable to capture them in detail, I began to investigate how this and other insects see.<\/p>

\"cttmhinctfuetdwvr0v6uepy9iuq4npn0xbmcysr3qt0nwrt.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"They - as I\u2019m sure you know - have compact eyes made up of thousands of little hexagonal shapes, known as ommatidia consisting of photoreceptor cells, these send signals to the insect brain creating an image, enabling them to navigate the world.\u00a0More here<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>

\"hp6z3qoyuvjydworvh46aszmwl382xovg0l0buxlvtt88avu.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"\"axwcbzontgkyfc5wtdt9iw0pyjtn3evnmemvmvxp1pdziasz.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"Above close ups of compound eyes, a butterfly and krill<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

\"a222jlnconidsaw5rwvn08kcdzadrromvmqs2esnds2nadl1.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"The quilt in progress<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

The hexagon became the focus for my gentle reference, I thought I would combine the hexagon shape with the colour of their wings, this inevitably led me to quilting. What I discovered is known as English Paper Piecing, was something I grew up with. My mother was a keen quilter and I remember being fascinated with the process. I embarked on my own quilt, the beginning was slightly daunting, though once I discovered how to draw a perfect hexagon the process took off. I began constructing the paper templates, these little paper shapes evoked memories of my now dead mother.<\/p>

\"lkxlrvjqdk19ia0qb0koxwcgsa24cwn1jyhoswx9qxr4j1m7.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"The finished quilt\/corset<\/em><\/strong><\/p>

I wondered what she would think of me now experimenting with \u2018her\u2019 craft. As I began to cover the paper pieces in fabric it felt like I was becoming her. I was sitting in the unseasonably cool evenings hand sewing with a lamp shining directly on to my work, just as she used to. I began constructing the hexagonal \u2018flowers\u2019 and feeling huge satisfaction, just as she had. Perhaps hers was the first example of accomplishment and satisfaction in ones craft I\u2019d seen.<\/p>

\"myqzp2zl23djfzwekvidbrdszfzg1umxn0gzxctzpgv5qbjl.png.png?w=1140&v=2\"As the elements came together I began exploring more about the significance of the hexagon in science and nature, perhaps due to my heightened awareness I began seeing them everywhere. My gentle references are about comparison and scale, in this case the smallness of the butterfly exaggerates my largeness in comparison. I came across a documentary; Secrets of Scale; Atoms to Supergalaxies<\/u><\/em><\/strong><\/a> it\u2019s an amazing romp through the nature of size and our place in the universe, just one amazing thing I learnt was that graphene is made up of a hexagonal lattice;<\/p>

\"gxcakzfjw4rwlvsxmqwz2t9pahn9e5oqerp1vfngsbuq0edc.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"\u201cGraphene is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure. The name is derived from \u201cgraphite\u201d and the suffix -ene, reflecting the fact that the graphite allotrope of carbon contains numerous double bonds. Graphene was properly isolated and characterised in 2004 by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester. They pulled graphene layers from graphite with a common adhesive tape in a process called either micro-mechanical cleavage or the Scotch tape technique.\u201d<\/p>

Source: Wiki<\/u><\/a><\/p>

\"xcil4pjuwikxfqepvy7snvho12rk8ubi3ctlv4kncn2ggnsk.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"From the tiniest things to the vastness of space, the James Webb Space Telescope<\/u><\/a> or JWST uses hexagonal mirrors to direct distant light into its sensors. I\u2019ve been eagerly following the JWST since it was launched last year, the characteristic hexagon mirrors have become synonymous with it. The hexagonal design is extremely reminiscent of what has become the \u2018corset\u2019 for this gentle reference.<\/p>

\"5wqkcamuifglupczefwt6b150goxynfgt28u47xg2cvcx5bc.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"And so to the Giant\u2019s Causeway in Ireland, a geological structure made from volcanic rock; \u201cThe Giant\u2019s Causeway formed just under 60 million years ago, and at that time Ireland was still attached to North America. Europe was starting to rip away from North America, and as it did so it created huge rifts in the earth\u2019s surface.<\/p>

\"vtetomkfambin12wvd2t48oygnmcpwc7jblpj8zaam6xulqx.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"Those rifts produced cracks, and up through those cracks came lots of molten rock and lava. Much later, erosion then caused rivers to form in the basalt. Then more lava came, which flowed through the river valleys. In this river valley, the Giant\u2019s Causeway we think of today was formed.\u201d This rather poetic description from the National Trust<\/u><\/a> website connects with the French for the\u00a0 red admiral which is \u201cLe Vulcain\u201d named in reference to the volcanic colours of the red admiral.\u00a0<\/p>

\"qjtmu3v3k3djlbbz54q3nbzyz9fu7tnbwvfnlagkphri8ufc.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"Over the last few weeks of producing this piece I have of course been aware of the hexagon in many other contexts from the floor tiles of a restaurant to the mosaics of Tottenham Court Road tube station to the honeycomb of a beehive. I adore exploring the links from subject to subject that echo our own connectedness to the universe, from vast to tiny. Humans are huge and minute, impactful and superfluous.<\/p>

Our civilisation is destroying the biodiversity of our planet, every little thing we do has amassed to create a potential catastrophe, rather like the Butterfly effect:<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>

\u201cChaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to have completely random states of disorder and irregularities. Chaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnection, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and organisation. The butterfly effect, an underlying principle of chaos, describes how a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state (meaning that there is sensitive dependence on initial conditions). A metaphor for this behaviour is that a butterfly flapping its wings in Texas can cause a tornado in Brazil.\u201d<\/p>

Source: Wiki<\/u><\/a><\/p>

Learn more about this here in another documentary from Professor Jim Al-Khalili <\/strong>below, a brilliant introduction to Chaos Theory and what is known as the Butterfly Effect.<\/p>