Jo Thomas’s Butterfly Sweet is a duo of works designed to work as digital downloads. Thomas says: “Both works started life as a commission exploring the relationship between the internet and downloading based on the theories of Jean Baudrillard. The Butterfly Sweet explores time which is static, which fluctuates between matter and musical time shown in pulse, pitch and micro melodies. I choose the symbol of the butterfly as it speaks to me on a musical and human level. The action of downloading music is fast: it is the speed of touch, the flutter of choice and it is calculated control.
“Air” is a work which explores the biological form of polymorphism in the butterfly. Different states of vibration and pulse are generated through the duplication and quadrupling of the same form.
“Flutter” is a very short work, which explores the nervous and delicate beauty of a creature, which jumps from place to place. Within the flits and scats there are places of still where flutter rests, listens and absorbs.”
The image above is a score for the work. Says Thomas: “This score was drawn before the works were written. This is one of several scores which have been drawn for the work. I used nail varnish, eye-liner, Indian ink and eye-shadow as materials (so it was drawn with Vivian Westwood, Elizabeth Arden and Chanel). It was drawn very impulsively and represented the first stage of composition. I use my scores to physically and kinetically connect with the digital sound in my imagination.”
Jo Thomas