It turns out that there is a 'poetics of chaos.' A chaotic system, far from the popular conception of the inside of a tornado — violent, uncontrollable, never-ending disaster — is constantly seeking stability. It's just like you and me! It wants peace and stability. It will settle into stasis and never get up from the easy chair again, if there are no new conditions introduced into it. A chaotic system starts from a discrete set of variables that determine where it will end up. Thing is, it doesn't reach the same outcome with each iteration. Launch it, and it may head not for Mars but straight into the sun, or into the nearest 7-11. Even with the same initial conditions, the trajectory cannot be predicted with certainty. Each day, most of us wake up with more or less the same initial conditions as the day before. But the day never ends up in the same place. It's chaos. 

 

Recently, the poetry that swirls around chaotic processes has infiltrated my thoughts, given rise to new ideas and connectivities. The instruments I use, based on Rob Hordijk's rungler circuit, function via the double-well principle (sometimes called "strange attractors"); they settle into patterns that remain in place until a new condition, or stimulus, is introduced into the system. What I like to tell audiences is that, alongside the dynamics of random event generation (not well-received technoblather among non-techies), chaotic systems are always seeking stasis — or "peace," if you will. People can relate to this, lending my presentations a resonance which elevates a concert of music into an ecstatic immersion. I like to draw audiences into what I'm doing gradually and, in a manner of speaking, unfold an outward-facing synaesthesia of abstract sounds connected with speaking.  -  Tom Djll