The Butterfly Entangled Effect

The Butterfly Entangled Effect is a large-scale interdisciplinary installation and performance developed by Jingyi Wang in collaboration with Maurice Benayoun and collaborators across art, science, and technology. The project investigates climate transformation, living systems, and artificial intelligence as a multi-agent problem of value.

The project investigates whether dormant biological life, including butterfly pupae and seeds, can be situated within melting ice structures under scientifically and ethically controlled conditions. The proposed system brings climate processes, biological resilience, machine control, and spectatorship into relation while keeping the feasibility and consequences of its living components under active research.

The project explores an AI-mediated control system that would regulate selected environmental conditions in response to biological thresholds, climate data, aesthetic parameters, and public exposure. The research asks how conflicting objectives are selected, weighted, and encoded, and where human responsibility remains.

At its core, The Butterfly Entangled Effect extends the inquiry into value beyond the human social sphere. It asks how human, ecological, and artificial systems of value might enter into conflict and how their relations could be responsibly investigated within a developing artistic system.