Long Walks in Non Euclidean Spaces
Imagine you’re in a room with two doors, or better yet, if you’re on desktop instead of mobile, don’t imagine it and just visit now. I’ll put in screenshots for the majority of my readers that are on mobile. This whole website looks way better on desktop though, for the record. Anyways here’s the room:
It’s a lobby filled with Flaminimis (that I’ll probably dress up next month, please pardon their immodesty until then). On the other side of the room are two open doorways. Physically it shouldn’t be possible for these rooms to exist side by side, and yet…
A full room…
next to a large open space.
This is what’s known as a non euclidean space, it doesn’t follow the rules of real geometry. Technically there’s like some more math rules that describe non euclidean geometry… “Euclid” was some dweeb from antiquity. However, I am not interested or qualified to talk about math. I’m interested in these spaces from an artistic lens.
In my gallery I achieved this non euclidean affect by just teleporting the player (I need to polish up the portals to make them look better but I’m still an amateur at coding). These rooms aren’t actually next to each other at all. Video games are full of spaces like these. But it was my favorite book, House of Leaves, that got me, Flaminia, thinking about their thematic significance. I’m not going to spoil that book, but I super recommend it.
Of course we’ll never be able to explore physical spaces that are larger on the inside than they appear on the outside. Or walk in a loop and somehow end up somewhere completely different. The objects around us behave as they should. Yet in a way every one of us… even you, not Flaminia, explore non euclidean spaces everyday.
The internet is a big one you’re on right now. It doesn’t need doors to get from one place to another. Just links.
Within us all is a mind vaster on the inside than it is on the outside. A confusing, contradictory, beautiful non euclidean world. In my own mind I find myself following the same patterns and cycles over and over, yet I am getting somewhere else. Somewhere similar, but different. Our memories, hopes, fears, and dreams don’t take up any space at all while being huge to us at the same time. We hold space for things that shouldn’t be able to exist right next to each other. Stories, whether truth, fiction, or the blend that I often right, stay the same. Yet the way they affect people, or even the same person at different times, is completely unique.
I know this is kind of a lot to say about a gallery of digital paper dolls. Especially one that only has two finished exhibits currently… but it’s not just about this project. It’s a musing on my creative process in general. I love long walks in non euclidean spaces, and I hope to build more in the future.
I’ll continue updating the new digital gallery each month. Click here to go there and follow it as it develops <3
On desktop though it doesn’t work for mobile yet.
