TREE MOMENTS TO TREE

“Tree Moments To Tree” is a collage of 837 different images created by Ni2. Each image is unique and consists of 34 times 27 pixels showing a moment in a tree’s life. The images show beautiful moments, interesting moments, funny as well as sad moments and deal with various subjects. The images are combined and arranged in a way that a tree is observed when looking at the entire collage. 

The artwork is pinned to IPFS.

Information and messages are not only conveyed by individual images but also on a meta-level, e.g. by a subset of images or a combination of subsets of images. The collage can be divided into the following subsets of images:

  1. Yellow/Red-subset: This subset of images represents the sun in the collage (upper left corner). It also represents autumn and contains trees with beautifully coloured tree crowns.
  2. White-subset: This subset represents the clouds in the collage. It also represents winter and contains snow-covered trees. Some subjects of the subset:
    • Nature/Life can be hard and brutal.
    • Love
  3. Blue-subset: This subset represents the sky. In addition, it represents spring and therefore contains trees with blossoms.
  4. Green-subset: This subset lies in the center of the collage. It represents the tree-crown in the collage as well as summer containing trees with fully green tree-crowns. Some subjects of the subset:
    • The animals need to survive and consequently there is a lot of fighting in nature. Different powers exist which are used by the animals, e.g. strength/size, agility, disguise, teamwork, intelligence etc.
    • Intelligence ensures the squirrel's survival. However, greed threatens the survival of the other squirrel.
    • Despite the hard life, there are moments of kindness.
  5. Brown-subset: The subset represents the trunk of the tree. It also reflects the problems of powerful creatures that are incapable of controlling their desire.
  6. Bright Green-subset: This subset represents the ground covered with grass. It provides suggestions that might help to solve serious problems in the world.

 

Subjects of combinations of subsets:

  • The Green-subset contains sequences of trees with signs in the tree-crown. A sequence describes the change of a system, i.e. a combination of objects, over time. The sequences reflect three things that seem to be fundamental in nature as they are present everywhere at different scales.
    1. Symmetries
    2. The combination of certainty (laws) and uncertainty (probability) related to how things change (determinism and indeterminism).
    3. The tendency of things to change towards homogeneity.

          In other subsets, trees are included that provide information related to the sequences. 

          Do you know the laws governing the change of the systems? (see Answer below) 

  • Green-subset: The intelligent creatures are patient, enjoy the things provided by the nature and live with the other creatures in harmony. Yellow/Red- and White-subset: The creatures begin to lose control of their desire reflected by, e.g. the amusement park on the tree and the excessive use of the snow cannon. Blue-subset: Greed and desire are growing in the creatures indicated by, e.g. more buildings on the trees. The other creatures start to suffer and the trees are less green. There is an effort to combat the plague/greed or is it even fighting between the greedy creatures? Brown-subset: Greed never stops. This results in drastic changes. One could say it’s “5 minutes to 12” or even “3 moments to 12”. However, nature always changes, so is it just “3 moments to 3”?
  • The black monkey seems to be weird, but maybe he recognizes something earlier than the others. Also, think about where the monkey is looking.

 

For those who like riddles:

  • How many ants are in the ant-bear?
  • What is the gravitational acceleration in (pixel/s^2)? (Assumption: one second between images)
  • How many animals do you see in the tree-crown of the image with coordinates (29,27)?
  • What is the ratio between the mass of the small and the big dog fighting for the bone? (Assumption: the mass of a dog is concentrated at the end of the visible part of the bone right before the mouth of the dog)
  • Where is the pug in the Blue-subset?

 

 

Laws governing the change of the systems in the sequences of trees:

Four objects always exist on the tree, each one positioned in a quadrant of the tree-crown. The objects can be divided into three groups related to balance, chess and playing card suits. The four objects in the tree-crown form a system, which changes over time as the objects interact with each other. The changes depend on the characteristics of the individual objects as well as their arrangement in the tree-crown and are described by operations. There are four deterministic operations represented by the signs of the basic operations in math (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) and three random operations represented by signs related to luck (four-leaf clover, horseshoe, ladybugs). A change (over one time step) of the system is described by four operations, each positioned in one quadrant of the tree-crown reflecting how the object in the respective quadrant changes. 

A deterministic operation replaces the object in the respective quadrant by another object that exists in the tree-crown. This is done as follows. The sign of the operation is positioned at the center of the tree-crown, i.e. the point where all four quadrants touch. The sign of the operation represents axes. The object in the respective quadrant is then replaced by another object whose quadrant coincides with the quadrant after reflecting it across an axis of the operation-sign. If there is no other quadrant that coincides with the quadrant after reflection across an axis, the object remains. This means if, for example, the minus sign is in the quadrant of the object, then the object is replaced by the object in the above or below quadrant. 

A random operation replaces the object in the respective quadrant by any object (does not need to be in the tree-crown) that has the same symmetry (line symmetry, point symmetry, point symmetry and line symmetry) as the sign of the operation. The new object is chosen randomly from the objects with a symmetry equal to the symmetry of the operation-sign (same probability for each object).

The four operations (that describe a change of the system) are determined as follows. In a quadrant only two deterministic operations are possible specified by the object in the quadrant before the change of the system. The two operations are related to the object as follows.

  • The signs for the two deterministic operations are equal to the axes of symmetry when the object is rotated by 90° (axes of symmetry = sign of first deterministic operation) and then rotated counter-clockwise by 45° (axes of symmetry = sign of second deterministic operation). If there is no axis of symmetry but a point symmetry, then the operation has the multiplication sign x (the dot is frequently the symbol for multiplication in math).

Each quadrant has two neighbouring quadrants (including the neighbouring objects), that touch the quadrant along an axis. If the neighbours of an object belong to the same group (balance, chess or playing cards), the first deterministic operation of the object describes the subsequent change in the quadrant. If the neighbours belong to different groups, the second deterministic operation of the object describes the subsequent change in the quadrant. So far it is explained under which conditions deterministic operations are applied. 

As explained above, the sign of a deterministic operation defines axes. If a quadrant reflected across an axis coincides with the quadrant containing the operation, the object of the quadrant (containing the operation) is replaced by the object of the reflected quadrant. This means that in case of the plus sign, two objects are available for the replacement, as two quadrants (neighbouring quadrants) coincide with the quadrant containing the plus sign. There is a conflict if the two objects are different. Consequently, the plus sign is replaced by a random operation in case of different neighbouring objects. The symmetries of the objects determine the random operation as follows. If the neighbouring objects have the same symmetry (line symmetry, point symmetry, point symmetry and line symmetry), the sign of the random operation has the same symmetry as the neighbouring objects. If the neighbours of the object have different symmetries, the symmetry of the random operation equals the symmetry of the object.

In summary, the change of the object in a quadrant (over one time step) is described by one of the seven operations (four deterministic and three random operations). It is entirely deterministic which operation describes the change of the object. However, the change itself may be deterministic in case of a deterministic operation and non-deterministic, i.e. including randomness, in case of a random operation.