Four-dimensional quaternions (a special group of fractals) are made visible by projection into three-dimensional space. Instead of modelling objects or scenes stemming from the human imagination with, for instance, the aid of 3-D software, the mathematics behind such software become the principle focus. Thus science is turned into something which can be experienced with the senses, which strips it and in particular mathematics of the distance and coldness commonly associated with them.

Pythagorean scholars understood science and mathematics as an expression of divine order. Numbers (which in their non-materiality are inherently mystical) were not mere aids but the manifestation of divine force - the only force capable of explaining the nature of the world. The spirit of the Pythagorean scholars lives on in a branch of elementary physics exploring the superstring theory. With it researchers hope to unify the four elementary forces of our universe (the gravitational, electromagnetic, weak nuclear and strong nuclear forces) in one formula.

Depending on the approach, this formula operates somewhere between at least ten-dimensional space and 26-dimensional space. With the mathematical body in Gestalt, it is a matter of visualizing the mathematical formula (x[n+1]=x[n]^p-c). In view of the ambitions of the superstring theory, which would like to find an all-embracing elegant formula for our universe, I would like to take the opposite course and present the strange universe of a different, considerably simpler, mathematic formula. While working on the gestalt (by changing the variables of the formula I influenced its formation), I was reminded of the early days of painting, when religious motifs prevailed and painting was a direct expression of spirituality. And because mathematics also possesses a spiritual potential, the direct occupation with it exercised a strong fascination on me.

There is a certain thrill in working directly with the building blocks used to described our universe. To get a feeling for the formation process in generating the gestalt, I spent almost a year manipulating variables. Rendering the selected sequences into a higher resolution took almost another year. To generate the images I used the freeware program Quat 1.1 by Dirk Meyer. Since the program is not able to produce image sequences, I was forced to write a small plugin that would feed Quat 1.1 with the necessary data for the image sequences of my choice.

Before beginning to work on Gestalt, I had spent much time exploring Mandelbrot fractals (in German so-called Apfelmännchen ["apple men"]), the geometry of the fourth-dimension (which relatively shortly after its description by Georg Bernhard Riemann in the mid 19th century was appropriated by occultists and spiritualists for their theories on, e.g., spiritual beings) and the superstring theory. When I then discovered quaternions, several of these popular-scientific fields of interest which I have just mentioned converged with my artistic interests.