On Turbulence: In between mathematics and performance

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the concept of turbulence, its several definitions, as well as its problematic in performance art as well as in mathematics. It is concerned more generally with the connections and interferences between mathematics and performance studies, within what we define as modern and contemporary societies, where the use of technology, software and the use of the internet are part of daily life and redefinition, or remediation of concepts emerge.

Turbulence is defined in the context of mathematics, and we focus especially in Partial Differential Equations context, where we find the concept since equations known as Navier-Stokes equations may have, under specific conditions, turbulent solutions. Also, in performance art context we recover the definition of turbulent states of the performer as they were defined or characterized by Eugenio Barba. We then relate both definitions with technology, software and internet to describe the construction of a concrete performance art piece, On a Multiplicity, where all these concepts are present and connected in order to generate new ideas.

This paper presents then a concrete performance art piece constructed under the influence of the concept of turbulence coming from mathematical as well as performance studies landscapes. On a Multiplicity mapped a multiplicity of self-representations from two fields usually seen as too different to be joined together. Its main object, in fact, was to test this claim, to question preconceived ideas about artistic creation and scientific research. The rationality of mathematical endeavour was recontextualized in the emotional milieu of improvisation: timeless abstraction was put in dialogue with embodied time. On the other hand, improvisation in real time was progressively distanced from the present of its performance as it was documented and the videos edited to meet different audience expectations.

This work is financially supported by Portuguese National Funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia – in the ambit of the project Pest-OE/MAT/ UI0117/2014.

Notes

¹For instance, considering the three-dimensional case, the operator ∇ applied to a function U is a three-dimensional vector containing the functions that determine velocity of U along each of the axes.

²Richard Feynman described turbulence as part of the unsolved problems coming from physics, and still today researchers are trying to prove the existence of a solution for three-dimensional Navier– Stokes equations in general.

³See website www.turbulence.org for examples.