I was recently invited by my good friend @carlgnash to explore the temple of The Clockwork Owls of Mandasore, and I enjoyed my time there greatly as he showed me – by the light of a triple moon as he advised – the incredible wonders of the temple and the multiverse to which the temple holds the keys.
This reminded me of the mosaics in the ruins of Binscraib, and the way that they were dated to at least 200,000 years ago, but are yet unfaded in the ruins, shining on the walls of the fallen temple as if time has not passed at all.
In fact, all walls but two, in the entire temple, have fallen, and those were the walls on which the above image and the one I will shortly share stand.
Since Mandasore and Binscraib do not require a trip through the multiverse, but are just a short warp jump apart, my friend and I flew over the day after we had completed our night tour at the Mandasore temple.
Binscraib is named for the man – Alexander Scraibin, a marvelous if strange human composer – who said that his tenth sonata was about insects, and that the insects are “the kisses of the sun.”
(Feel free to turn on the appropriate music here)
Many ancient human religions exalted certain insects to the status of deity, and even blurred the line between human and insect and spirit through transformations.
Thus it was at first assumed that the people of Binscraib had a similar type of religion … the figure above, when it was uncovered, seemed to suggest that.
But then this image was uncovered, of a much more threatening aspect, with something like a spider proceeding forth from an ominous humainoid/insectoid figure ...
… and it was then wondered if what we as humans thought of as a place of worship was perhaps something else, perhaps a record made by the Binscraibins of an enemy they had overcome, or how they had done it.
The planet showed signs of its civilizations' decline coming through major conflict, and some of the angles of that destruction suggested an air war from very high in the atmosphere – or, perhaps, from orbit, although space travel was not known to have been done in that system until very near our own time.
This also left the unsettling possibility that perhaps those two walls were spared as a monument the conquering aliens had left in the ruins – a signature of their far greater power, still vivid 200,000 years later.
We do not know the answer. All we can do is look, and wonder, in awe, at what was left behind, as the great humanoid/insectoid face stays silent, and tells us nothing.
Thanks to @carlgnash for the inspiration to get back to fractal alien art!
Yes! This is so awesome! I love that a wormhole connected between our realities and our fictions at the same time :) Hey I am minting a small collection of my clockwork owls of Mandasore images as NFTs at my OpenSea (https://opensea.io/account/alien3y3). I was planning on using the portals in the interlocking temple as a way to link future collections of my alien art together, but I just realized I could also use these wormholes to link my art with other creators' art in the same collection. Can I have your permission to mint one of these fractals and list it for .1 ETH as a portal destination from the interlocking temple? I will give you 100% of the sale if it sells, credit you as artist and link to this post in the NFT when I mint it. I think it would be a really cool way to expand the universe I am creating with art to include other people! Let me know
Sure! Be my guest -- and thank you! You have always been so thoughtful and kind to me from my first day as a redfish here -- thank you for always thinking so kindly of me and setting me up for blessing!
Thank you for taking the alien art ball and running with it! I really love the lore you came up with here :) I am actually really excited about this idea of wormholes to other artist's art and have talked to a couple other friends of mine who make various sorts of alien art about doing this as well!
Yes! This is SO EXCITING!
I have been working on a different project but circled back to this tonight - I combined all three of your images into a triptych with snippets of your prose (this is a low res preview because I think peakd didn't like the full 4186 x 1862 version when I tried to paste it in the comments here LOL ). Wanted to run this by you before minting as an NFT:
And as far as crediting you: Deeann D. Mathews and a link to your Hive blog (Peakd?)? Any other links you want me to promote?
That's just lovely, @carlgnash ... do the Peakd link, and just please add my NFTShowroom link with it ...
https://nftshowroom.com/deeanndmathews/gallery
... and THANK YOU!
One more formality to make everything proper - I am creating a clockwork portal to Binscraib that will have a kaleidoscoped portion of one of your fractals in the center of a clockwork mandala. I just want your official permission to reuse/remix a portion of your art for this purpose.