Chaos at Hampton Court 2012

CHAOS is concerned with Chaos Theory, intelligent design and fate.

Its creation could, along with everything else, be the result of intelligent design, chaos or fate. If highly ordered structures can be the result of complex chaotic systems, it could be that everything  is a result of complex chaotic systems and by logical extension, all human endeavour is not as we like to think within our power to control. We may no more be in control of our destiny than an individual atom. This concept is sometimes called Fate.

At first glance CHAOS would seem to be anything but random or chaotic given its precise structure. However, on closer inspection the texture of the blocks and the pattern of the duckweed do appear random or chaotic. As Edward Lorenz discovered in 1960, things that appear random are in fact complex systems that can be understood but not predicted by Chaos Theory. The very process of creating this installation is rooted in Chaos Theory. I did not set out to design an installation about Chaos Theory. It appeared in my mind as a result of my many and disparate experiences on top of the billions of coincidences that result in my existing. I can therefore claim no credit for its existence other than that it would not exist without me and an immeasurable number of other coincidences.