What is space?
Most likely, it is a property of the human mind. An algorithm, like time, that helps consciousness make sense of the world around us.
That our idea of space is relative can be illustrated simply, without need to delve into quantum physics.
Take the “Magic Mirror” toy that was popular in the late 19th century. Images that appear to be distorted blobs become detailed drawings when viewed in a different way — in this case as a cylindrical reflection. This is an example of anamorphosis, which has been used in art since Leonardo Da Vinci and by many since, including Salvador Dalí and Marchel Duchamps.
Putting the concept into practice in a very modern way is one of Swiss design firm Zmik‘s latest installations, appropriately entitled “Anna.”
The main corridor in the new offices of Swiss interactive firm iart is visually expanded by a series of large-scale drawings.
From five set viewpoints, these sketches coalesce to reveal wireframes of (both real and imagined) spaces behind the walls. Viewed from any other position, the design appears to be simply a rather random pattern of graphic lines.
Zmik describes the work as an “allegory for the quest of new perspectives.”
It can also be viewed as a metaphor for the “fixed vantage point” each of us holds in this journey of life, along with its accompanying limitations, biases and opportunities.
But this rigidity is changing. Whole new online communities — such as Twitter, World of Warfare, Second Life — are forming with their own, different rules of space and time.
Dr. Robert Lanza says, “Reality is simply an information system that involves our consciousness.”
Understanding consciousness and the way it shapes our worlds is the next big step in evolution.
Let’s be intent on getting there.
[via core77 and dezeen, interior photos by Eik Frenzel]
Nature as evidenced by our ongoing understanding of evolution is a forever progression of change, neither good nor bad, neither progression nor recession, yet always locked in time and space, its playground. We of minds have two choices, be children of nature or be children of thought. Most chose the mind (usually by the default of evolution and tradition), and so construct sense from a surrounding nature that knows not sense. Good/bad now can become real in the mind(s) of humans, this and other concepts are constructed within, yet not found without. Nature ignorant of such non-material matters, matters that only reside within skulls, and as far as we know, found nowhere in that night sky, nor anywhere among those fuzzy yet colorful blotches populating each of those amazing Hubble snapshots. But in the end, amazing to us only, for nature is dumb to it all.
BB