Edward Lorenz, a pioneering figure in the field of chaos theory, coined the phrase “butterfly effect” and posed the well-known question “Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” In posing the question, Lorenz sought to highlight the intrinsic difficulty of predicting the long-term behavior of complex systems that are sensitive to initial conditions, for example, the weather and climate; these systems are often referred to as chaotic.

Organic Art (William Latham and Stephen Todd, 1987) was reincarnated by the same authors with programmer and artist Peter Todd as Mutator2 (2013); Mutator2 was transitioned into VR as Mutator VR (2016) with programmer and artist Lance Putnam. The authors describe the graphics and audio systems of these works, particularly the procedural generation and visual effects and the creative exploitation of these effects within an art installation.