Sensitive Dependence

Chaos theory and electronic instruments

Type: Self-initiated artistic collaboration Start: February 2026 Collaboration: Luis Negrón van Grieken × Ivo Boll (Amsterdam)

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The starting point

The Video/Snare — an acoustic drum that is simultaneously a light-emitting object. Each strike produces a visual event that cannot be fully controlled: the light impulse is not an effect, it is the performance. This unpredictability is not a limitation — it is the compositional material.

This is where Ivo Boll's work on chaos theory enters. Chaos theory describes systems where small variations in initial conditions produce radically different outcomes — deterministic in principle, uncontrollable in practice. The snare strike is that system. What gets recorded, projected, granularly fragmented and reassembled in live synthesis follows the same logic: iteration, sensitivity, divergence.

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The framework: Sensitive Dependence

A series of performances and possibly a touring work structured around three ideas:

1. The instrument as chaos generator The Video/Snare as a custom electronic instrument that renders acoustic events visually in real time. Ivo's instrument-building practice extends this: each instrument in the ensemble becomes a node in a chaotic system, not a voice in a score.

2. Archipelago structure No linear dramaturgy. Sound islands form, overlap, dissolve — modelled on the concept of archipelagic thinking: elements that are related without being continuous. Chaos attractors as compositional logic.

3. Live cinema as documentation of turbulence Analog found footage, micro-cameras, projected light surfaces. The visual layer does not illustrate the music — it registers its instability.

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Position within the Lab

Not a client project. The question belongs to the Lab:

Can chaos — as a system, not a metaphor — function as a genuine compositional logic?

It belongs to the Lab line Altered instruments — the building and modification of instruments as an artistic research practice.