Unfolding Space

Unfolding Space was conceived by Julieta Aguilera as an immersive malleable environment for the CAVE virtual reality theater where body gestures would alter the structure of the space surrounding the user. The iPad and iPhone versions of the piece give the user a small dynamic window into that world. Unlike the iPad and iPhone versions, the CAVE version of this application allowed you to move though an endless grid of tesseracts. Unfolding Space is an interactive experience where the three dimensional shadow of a four dimensional textured grid is unfolded through gesture. Moving though this fluid grid seeks to evoke the experience of walking through a labyrinth that opens and closes its corridors at will, so the viewer is never trapped as long as he/she can master the form. In other words, "Unfolding Space" shows a structure that responds to motion as if the viewer was wearing space itself. Julieta's idea reflects on how we assimilate the physical space that surrounds us into mental spaces, and is based on architectural, pictorial, and mathematical works in human history such as Gaudi's structures, Japanese gardens, Polynesian navigation, religious iconography, and knot theory. She was inspired by her mother's dream of being trapped in a labyrinth, and wanted to recreate that environment while giving the user the possibility of finding a way through.