Pattern

Improvisations
by arnaud mart i n

While the study of biodiversity reveals no human-like intentionality behind its

rambunctious forms, the mechanisms that generate them possess intrinsically
creative properties.

utterflies and moths offer a breathtaking

example of evolution gone out of control, with
200,000 extant speciesno less than 12% of all
known animal species on Earth. Importantly, this diversity
has deployed at rather explosive levels on the wing surface,
giving us the opportunity to contemplate the creativity of
nature on a simple canvas. So lets open some of these wooden
drawers from the natural history museum and look at some
specimens. Here is one with a shiny blue. This one mimics
a dead leaf, this other one a hornetthis one has eyespots

that makes it look like a small owl. If we magnified the wing

a hundred times, the pointillist rendering of individually
colored scales would compare to a Monet observed at a close
distance; from afar, abstract landscapes, complex blends
of colors, shapes vibrant with contrast and fine details. But
once past the visual fascination, would you appreciate these
natural objects for their creative features? Art without an
artist, without any intent to reflect or express the complexity
of human experience. The raw beauty of life forms, elaborated
over deep time by a process coupling random variation and

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natural selection, is somewhat difficult to comprehend to

the human mind, but going beyond the surface of natural
phenomena always reveals new sources of awe.
We must first detach ourselves from an anthropocentric
interpretation of nature to better understand it. As I wonder
about the world that surrounds us, it is easy for me to
understand why a Picasso, the pen I am holding in my hand,
or the text in front of your eyes have come to existence. We
humans of the Homo faber kind are special for our remarkable
ability to produce both tools and language. The former are
oriented towards the realization of a task, the latter is a vehicle
of meaning. We are purpose-making animals and finality
guides what we doour nervous system is by definition
wired for projection into the future, anticipating, imagining,
and constantly articulating motivation and action. Even a
dada artist who would aim at creating a purposeless piece
would fail to do so, just by formulating the idea. Absence
of intentionality captures a key feature of natural objects in
contrast to their manufactured counterparts (notice however
that technology is not a specificity of man: the hexagonal
honey combs built by bees maximize volume and robustness
while minimizing wax use with a mathematical perfection).
This does not mean that objects of nature are devoid of a
purpose. As minimal as its stimuli and action range may be,

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photo: Kristina Dutton

the tick awaits all day at the tip of the

grass with the perspective to catch a
ride on a warm-blooded host. And
of course, some cognitively advanced
animals display signs of intentionality
(the curious reader may find online the
story of Santino, a chimpanzee from
the Munich Zoo with unusual longterm planning abilities). But some
complex behaviors set aside, and in
contrast with the manufacturer or the
artist, the purpose of a given natural
feature generally does not explain how
it came to exist in the first place. There
is a subtlety here: giraffes did not
grow long necks with the project of
reaching high branches. Rather, giraffe
ancestors that possessed a longer neck
opportunistically got access to pristine
food sources. Evolutionary change, or
innovation, is not directed towards a
pre-determined goal. Rather, variation
that is available at a given time is
extemporaneously selected; it is a slow
process made of small steps, always
determined by immediate needs.

Now that this distinction is clarified,

we can venture more comfortably
into a terrain of analogies comparing
nature and art. Or, at least, we can start
to ask to what extent the generation
of biodiversity follows parallels with
human creative processes. This is
essentially the question asked by a
blooming branch of modern biology
called Evo-Devo, and there may be
no better phenomenon than color
patterns to explore this foreign shore.
One of the key findings of Evo-Devo
is that all animals are made of a
conserved set of genes that existed at
a rudimentary state 600 millions of
years ago, well before the origin of the
first vertebrates. The genes involved in
butterfly wing patterning are much
more than butterfly wing genes,
they are shape genes, repeatedly
recruited to sketch territories and
boundaries not only in the wings but
also in the embryo and organs of the
same butterfly. And these shape genes

have been around for so long that we

have them as well for drawing our
complex anatomy. In my own research,
I repeatedly stumbled upon the fact
that genes that act as major molecular
paint brushes for color patterning are
being studied by other scientists as
organizing the structure of our brains,
eyes, or bones. They even are present in
jellyfish and earthworms, where they
probably fulfill other functions related
to morphological specification. We are
all so different, and yet so similar, and
there is grandeur in this view of life.
So the butterfly wing patterns have not
evolved from scratch, and when one
looks at novelty under a microscope,
things are never as novel as previously
thought. Rather, they are the
product of the re-use of pre-existing
ingredients and mechanisms, namely
a universal genetic toolkit specialized
in the evolution of form. New
combinations form over time, creating
an endless stream of novel outputs.

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photos: Kristina Dutton

The technological metaphor works well

here: there really is a palette of genes
dedicated to drawing round shapes, to
erase lines, to make pigments, or to apply
light effects. And this is the re-assortment
of these tools on the spatial canvas of the
insect wing that is the core process behind
pattern diversity: a constant, free-form
tinkering of pre-existing elements. The
mechanisms are elegant in the way they
explain some complicated visible by some
simple invisible, and are directly related to
the understanding of our own origins, both
from the womb of our mothers (ontogeny)
and from the branches of our evolutionary
tree (phylogeny).
It is unclear whether comparing natural
patterns to art is a meaningful metaphor,
but if one wants to make such a comparison,
then evolution would be best seen as an
improvisation artist. Like the butterfly
wing, the improviser does not know exactly
what the final result will be (im-provisio,
unforeseen). It works with whatever is at
its disposal, in interaction with contingency
and constraints, and without looking for
perfection. In a world of constant change,
the ways of nature should inspire us and
can only foster our own creativity.

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Arnaud Martin (George Washington University) is a butterfly geneticist interested

in how DNA codes for shapes and how biodiversity has emerged from the tinkering
of genetic information. @evolvwing

Chris Brown, composer, pianist, and electronic musician, creates music for acoustic
instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising
ensembles. Collaboration and improvisation are consistent themes in his work, along
with the invention and performance of new electronic instruments and software. He
is a founding member of The HUB, the pioneering network music ensemble, and has
composed many interactive works for the percussionist William Winant (Iconicities,
New World Records.) His trio with Winant and saxophonist Frank Gratkowski were
featured on the 2009 Donaueschingen Musiktage. His most recent music explores
microtonal tunings, including 6Primes, for piano in 13-limit just intonation, Arcade
for string quartet, and Ragamala Chiaroscuro, for wind trio. Recordings are available
on New World, Tzadik, Pogus, Intakt, Rastascan, Ecstatic Peace, Red Toucan, SIRR,
Leo, and Artifact labels. He is currently a Professor of Music at Mills College and
Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM).
c bm use. c om

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