t l k
The Butterfly Effect
VENUE
7. St Michael and All Angels, East Coker
EVENT: Sat 24 May, drinks from 7pm start 8pm
Responding to the festival’s provocation ‘Thinking in Circles’, t l k draws from chaos theory and psychoacoustics for Od Arts 2025. The butterfly effect suggests that small, seemingly insignificant events can have seismic and unpredictable consequences elsewhere: ‘the flap of a butterfly’s wings results in a distant tornado’. Using voice, electronics and field recordings, t l k explores how incremental changes to initial sonic material can lead to vastly different outcomes, highlighting the sensitivity and gravity of our microscopic actions in a chaotic system. The piece encourages reflection on the impacts of human behaviour within a paradox of chaos: we can examine cycles of human life and history, seemingly repeating themselves in deterministic ways, yet an unpredictable possibility of outcome remains.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
t l k is a Bristol-based artist, vocalist and producer. Fluid in form, with a leaning towards cinematic ambient, downtempo electronic, skewed pop, neo-classical and musique concrète sensibilities, their works evolve from memory, dialogue, dreams and ongoing explorations into loss, selfhood, human behaviour and its coalescence and tensions with the non-human. Centring the voice-as-instrument, t l k’s practice holds a deep commitment to the act of noticing. They have performed at the Barbican, Southbank Centre and Glastonbury Festival, with bespoke compositions for the Sainsbury Centre and Luke Jerram’s ‘Gaia’ installation, gathering a 35-strong choir to ‘keen’ the Earth at Bristol Cathedral.