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RESPONSECALL AND

MAY 9, 2015THE EM

ERALD TABLET

by aRnaud maRtIn

PatternImprovisations

B 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

While the study of biodiversity reveals no human-like intentionality behind its rambunctious forms, the mechanisms that generate them possess intrinsically creative properties.

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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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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 long-term 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.

photo: Kristina Dutton

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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.

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).

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photos: Kristina Dutton