"Biosphlake" | Gallery: Motifs

mandelsage (60)in #art • 6 years ago

This week, I was taken back to primary school geography, when we learned about the water cycle for the first time.

Water evaporates from sea and land thanks to the sun. It falls down in many different forms, onto mountains and escarpments, gets channeled into rivers, which all make their way back to the ocean. And thanks to this, we all get to live. \o/

Not unusually, this all put me into an introspective mood, thinking about the origins of life as I worked... I could almost feel being a squishy little single-celled organism, fighting for my place in the sun...

And that now reminded me of the ambitious game Spore ... Did you ever play that? =) The first half of the game was the most enjoyable.

Biosphlake

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Gallery: Motifs
Max. Print Size: 28" x 28"

“It necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, and of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among many other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. And nothing warrants the supposition - or the hope - that on this score our position is ever likely to be revised. There is no scientific concept, in any of the sciences, more destructive of anthropocentrism than this one.”

-- Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity

“Nothing is more important to human beings than an ecologically functioning, life sustaining biosphere on the earth. It is the only habitable place we know of in a forbidding universe. We all depend on it to live and we are compelled to share it; it is our only home... the earth's biosphere seems almost magically suited to human beings and indeed it is, for we evolved through eons of intimate immersion within it. We cannot live long or well without a functioning biosphere, and so it is worth everything we have.”

-- Joseph Guth

The quote above by Joseph Guth got me picturing our little ball of rock and water and air, hurtling and spinning through space at a tremendous... And I'm picturing it from a distance... As though it were the size of the moon in my vision... There it goes, bound by the laws of gravity, with all of us... Every single thing, living and dead, that has ever been, there on it. Fighting out little fights, thinking ourselves important, when, after a blink or two of astrological time, we will cease to exist. We won't matter at all.

But do we matter even now? ... Yes, we do.

Sure, we'll all be gone, but we matter. We are important. It doesn't matter if there's no one else to see us - actually, if we are alone in the universe, then we certainly are special... The only life to exist ever. That's unlikely, but possible... - But we're important, yes, because we are record keepers. We will leave traces in this universe, either to be found by future versions of ourselves, or by other races, so yes, we, and everything we do, is important. Let's leave a good example behind to be fond, shall we?

Does my Mandala have anything to do with any of that? Well, it's what got the thought started, at least ;)

^{Image from Pixabay}

First things first, I loaded up my usual mandala formulae, and changed one of them. Then I started tweaking parameters until I found something that inspired me:

Next, I got to work on the colours... As I started playing, I noticed the sun shape in the center, and with that, the "biosphere" theme sprang to mind...:

With the sun in the center, I immediately started seeing the bushy shapes as the tops of trees... From there, I knew I was going to have rivulets off water springing from the trees closers to the center, and running their way down to the ocean on the edges...:

And as with all of my mandalas, the size of this one is very big! ... 7000 x 7000 pixels, which means it can be printed at 70cm x 70cm. Here are some details, close up and personal:

Please let me know what you think of it =) ... I'm quite proud of it... When I can combine my art with my love of science and in this case, with the great human drama of existence itself, I'm especially happy.

Remember too that all my designs are for sale. See my site, Mandelsage.com, for details =) ... And I am open to doing commissions too! How about a mandala based on your personality? ;)

Thank you for your upvote 💖
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A few recent posts of mine:
ULOG: Talking into the Future 003 - RL vs Steemit | "The Garden Kingdom" - Choose Your Own Adventure! | No Man's Sky - Diary of an Intergalactic Traveller - 002
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