Prophecy of butterflies

Prophecy of Butterflies is an animated video loop conceived as a large-scale '“painting in motion.” The piece is part of a body of work that seeks to represent the “Amazon,” which of course is impossible to represent fully as the name of a vast region of diverse ecosystems, climates, people and other beings, and also the name of a concept that acts in and on the imaginaries of myriad people and cultures throughout the world. For many, Amazon = lungs of the earth or “nature” itself. 

The work depicts a fanciful notion of how the “Amazon” might describe its dreams about itself to a western art-viewing public. For this purpose, Sayler/Morris envisage the jungle using the language of butterflies, which many cultures in the world take to be messengers. The message repeats seamlessly every 10 minutes, the narrative arc like a long inhale and exhale. The premise of the piece is evocative of the recursive logic of AI and  could be read as a sort of AI hallucination, AI.

Sayler/Morris designed Prophecy of Butterflies to be distributed into four distinct compositions or snapped together into a single large work. When shown as quadrants, the animated butterflies move from “painting” to “painting” and around the room. When shown as one large work the butterflies coalesce into a pattern of circles that reference a painting by Wassily Kandinsky. The piece was originally commissioned by The Momentary at Crystal Bridges as part of the Enduring Amazon exhibition curated by Joe Thompson and Elise Raborg. It is a companion piece to Eclipse and also related to the in-progress Crystal Forest project. With a score by Ben Frost and animation by Nick Roth. Consulting on butterfly anatomy and behavior by Dr. Jaret Daniels.

The butterflies depicted in the animation all dwell in the Amazon and are as follows:  Menelaus blue morpho (darker blue); Protesilaus protesilaus, (swallowtail- white); Zaretis itys (leafwing - brown); Eueides aliphera (orange); Astraeodes areuta (delicate metalmark - yellow); Dynamine postverta  (four-spot sailor - light blue); Callicore astarte stratiotes (red).