This collection explores critical and visual practices through the lens of interactions and intersections between pattern and chaos. The dynamic of the inter-relationship between pattern and chaos is such as to challenge disciplinary boundaries, critical frameworks and modes of understanding, perception and communication, often referencing the in-between territory of art and science through experimentation and visual scrutiny. A territory of 'pattern-chaos' or 'chaos-pattern' begins to unfold.

Drawing upon fields such as visual culture, sociology, physics, neurobiology, linguistics or critical theory, for example, contributors have experimented with pattern and/or chaos-related forms, processes, materials, sounds and language or have reflected on the work of other artists, scientists and scholars. Diagrams, tessellations, dust, knots, mazes, folds, creases, flux, virus, fire and flow are indicative of processes through which pattern and chaos are addressed.

The contributions are organized into clusters of subjects which reflect the interdisciplinary terrain through a robust, yet also experimental, arrangement. These are 'Pattern Dynamics', 'Morph Flux Mutate', 'Decompose Recompose', 'Virus; Social Imaginary' and 'Nothings in Particular'.

'In Pattern and Chaos in Art, Science and Everyday Life, chaos serves as the setting, while the creation, examination, documentation and destruction of patterns constitute the subject of the narrative... Many of these essays break down our sensory and imagined world into fundamental parts for metaphysical scrutiny and transformations between sense and creative interpretation.

The personal and observational nature of...most of the writing in this book, is characteristic of academic writing about the creative process. This type of writing will be familiar to those publishing work in creative disciplines or collaborating with creatives in academia. For them, this book is a survey of works in related fields. Some of the featured techniques could be repeated at a smaller scale as practical exercises or investigations. This style will be less familiar to scientists, but it is a valuable example of research documentation outside the lab and shows how scientific research can be combined with work from other communities.

Regardless of your professional discipline, when you take a step back and consider what these artists are doing, the imaginative power of their work is moving.'

Victoria Mitchell is Research Fellow at Norwich University of the Arts. She has published papers on various aspects of art, design and textile culture, pursuing an interdisciplinary theoretical approach which focuses on material, making, metaphor and meaning, and is co-editor of The Material Culture of Basketry (Bloomsbury, 2020), for which she wrote on pattern in the context of braiding and dancing.

Dr Sarah Horton is an artist-researcher whose practice includes sculpture, drawing and painting often resulting in site-specific artwork. Her doctorate ‘Decoration: Disrupting the workplace and challenging the work of art’ indicates an ongoing interest in the way pattern, decoration and ornament is used in fine art and in a wider sense to indicate value and identity.