Tvář z bahenního světa (A Face from the Mud World)

Description

A mixed media technique featuring layered areas of color, textured coatings, gestural brushstrokes, and contrasting lines.

When the expedition first landed on the muddy world, it found no civilization.

Only endless yellow plains, shallow lakes of thick mineral liquid, and strange black formations protruding from the surface.

Then the landscape opened up.

What they had taken to be soil shifted, and a gigantic face slowly emerged from the mud. It resembled a distant animal ancestor, with wide eyes, an elongated snout, and a chin still buried deep in the wet earth.

Only then did they realize they weren’t looking for cities.

They were standing right on top of one of its inhabitants.

This species spends most of its life submerged beneath the surface. Individual beings communicate with one another through pressure waves and chemical changes in the soil. Their thoughts travel through the mud over distances of thousands of kilometers, so that the entire world forms a single, slowly communicating network of consciousness.

The black symbols in the image are not writing. They are traces of these beings’ movement and communication. The blue-green area beneath the face represents living mud, in which the memory of their civilization is stored.

The heroes attempt to make first contact.

However, the being before them does not respond.

After a long time, it opens its eyes and sends out a single pressure wave.

The translator interprets it as a question:

“Why did you wake us up?”