The palm tree became an icon embodying both nature and artificiality — suspended in a tension between exotic ornamental plant and marker of urban identity. Their omnipresence owes as much to the film and television industry as to a culturally rooted, romanticized idea that has elevated palm trees to global symbols of luxury and exoticism. We associate them both with 'sex, glamour, and celebrity' and with the 'old dream': the sea breeze on the Riviera, the eternal summer in the tropics, the exotic Orient, the fertile oasis — that sense of lightness and freedom that is both seductive and illusory.

The juxtaposition of Ruscha's palm trees — based on analog photographs — and my derivative representations and medial excursions into the realms of 3D and generative AI, raises key questions about appropriation: what, and how much, of a source (parent) is transferred into, and retained within, a respective medium. At the same time, it examines the concept of the generated look-alike as a virtual image in relation to our concept of reality. It highlights the tension between recognizability and algorithmic re-creation, between resemblance and deviation, and aims to encourage a critical reflection of a complex, constantly changing multi-medial world — a world shaped by a network of data, its analysis and automation, as well as code. These considerations mark the beginning of an artistic search for roots and traces within the ambient noise of today's media landscapes.