The Tree of Everywhere: new media art, computer science and the western mystery tradition

This project investigates the tree as a metaphor for understanding the intersections between new media art, computer science and my own personal spiritual journey through the Western Mystery Tradition. It argues that there is an unexplored potential for concepts in computer science based on the tree metaphor to enlighten and enhance our understanding of art and new media art, and links this idea to the omnipresence of the tree metaphor in the various streams of mystical and esoteric traditions of the West in order to reconcile the parallel and intersecting histories of these three realms of human experience.

In this project I investigate interdisciplinary narratives using the tree metaphor as a way to locate my own new media art practice. I focus on the work of new media expert Lev Manovich as a key example of the convergence of computer science and new media art. In this exploration centred around practice-based reiterations, I posit a new paradigm – the Data/Algorithm Model. In addition to contextualising this original contribution to the field of computer science and new media art, the exegesis takes the reader on a journey into the author's conceptualisations around the model and discusses how this in turn shapes, and is shaped by, the two artworks of the project, Time and Space and The Tree of Everywhere.