A Tree in the Garden of Eden memebrane print

Size of original 8000x10500 pixels = 30x40 inch print with full detail

check the crops

The name for this image comes from interviews at a vernissage of my pieces on 11/11/10, photos [link]

memebranes were born out of thousands of photomontage experiments I did in the digital darkroom since 2000, when I was looking for a means to transcend imitative photography and to grasp the ungraspable abstract images I knew were waiting inside me that I had to depict in order to redeem my soul...

I confined myself to three constraints:
puritan photomontage - nothing generated by computer, like e.g. fractals, everything you see went through the lens
abstract - not recognizable what was photographed, not to remind anything known from this world, at the same time I was guided to break on through to the other side through
the doors of photography
bilateral symmetry - not only being a kind of rorschachish/projective but also this symmetry seems to harmonize, maybe because it is a characteristic of animals who are capable of moving freely through their environments and who look for symmetry when choosing a mate and making decision whether is-it-prey-or-am-I-the-prey... in other words "If it is symmetrical, I have to be on guard" is deeply rooted in our brain.

All this was multiplied by movement, time and sound when I started animating them 2 years ago and discovered that they are actually turning into 3D entities and environments (usually both), with own will, fractaling, dancing, telling a story about the different stages of life, the universe and everything...

The name "memebranes" came to me when I was updating my education watching The Elegant Universe, a popular science show with breathtaking visuals depicting string, superstring and M-theory where I first understood what the branes are and it occurred to me that what I am doing is exactly this: depicting something that is invisible to the human eye by unfolding the implicate branes.
The "meme" notion was best described by Mr. Terrence McKenna in his "Opening the Doors of Creativity":
"...a meme is the smallest unit of meaning of an idea. Ideas are made of memes. And I think the art community might function with more efficiency in the production of visionary aesthetic breakthroughs if we would think of ourselves as an environment modeled after the natural environment, where we as artists are attempting to create memes which enter an environment of other memes that are in competition with each other, and out of this competition of memes, ever-more appropriate, adapted and suitable ideas can gather and link themselves together into higher and higher organisms."
This image is used in an abstract film I made from my pieces, premieres 12/12/12