MEMES#I/O represents a virtual and installative environment which deals with public and private communication. Memes as units of cultural information are created out of text messages and are encoded by associatively chosen images. Each created meme is stored in a memepool and may be decoded over the internet or in an installation to build a net-community.

The creator of a meme can spread his meme within an email to certain people. The recipients are informed about being touched from an unknown meme, but only see the images and not the message. These recipients but also everybody else, who like to participate at a meme-community, are invited to decode the meme with the web-interface or to visit the installation and decode it by brainwaves connected to an EEG-interface. For both methods a game challenges the recipients to find out the content of the messages behind the images - either by bringing their brainwaves into a relaxed state or by finding matching keywords when writing another message. Once a message is decoded, the creator of the mem and all its replicants may establish contact and communicate over email. Each repetition of these processes creates a new member of the meme-community, which makes the whole grow. The memepool offers public communication and also private and anonymous email to its members.

Based on theories of Richard Dawkins, MEMES#I/O is an approach to track and visualize the way, how thoughts, ideas -i.e. memes- are replicated from mind to mind. On the other hand, MEMES#I/O is a neutral platform which stores and shares content. The memes and emails serve as transmitters between individual and social interventions, which get connected through the immanent rules of the system.