"Humans can only see in three dimensions, but that doesn’t stop artists from trying to visualize more. Unifield, a form experiment by artist Can Buyukberber, is a physical-digital hybrid, created from scratch using carpentry techniques, laser cutting, and projection mapping. The final work, a complex, undulating, black and white pattern, not only spans the physical and immaterial realms, but also forays into physically impossible, conceptual space. We generally think of our world as having three physical dimensions: width, height, and depth. The fourth dimension is sort-of present in our world, known in physics as time or spacetime. Unless you’re a math whiz, conceptualizing any more dimensions is damn near impossible, but theoretically, any number of physical dimensions can be imagined for the purposes of geometry, or, like in Unifield, for art. Multidimensional worlds have been theorized by 20th century mathematicians like H.S.M. Coxeter, whose higher-dimensional geometry studies directly inspired Unifield. His work as a geometer influenced artists like MC Escher and Buckminster Fuller."
-Alyssa Buffenstein, The Creators Project
Unifield is a form experiment which attempts to explore H.S.M. Coxeter's higher dimensional geometry studies. The work intends to trigger a timeless perception by merging both archaic and futuristic components. By using computational design techniques with a digital fabrication method and projection mapping, Unifield uses the space where digital and physical overlaps as a portal to visualization possibilities of a higher dimensional object.
Embedded in the history, all cultures are familar with esoteric schemes and ornaments which often symbolizes a journey of self discovery. By considering this graphical similarity, I wanted to approach the work as an ambiguous sculpture, animated with light and sound that has the qualities of this historical background and scientific studies. With this correlation, Unifield aims to transcend a single association of time, which rather is a holistic understanding.
After the computational modeling process, I've worked with a laser cutter and brought digital layers into the physical material which was followed by painting and assembling processes. With projection mapping technique, the work discovers the different phases of the geometrical relationships and creates an optical and perceptual experience with animated light and motion.
During the concept development research of Unifield, I was interested in visualization possibilities of higher dimensional objects. In mathematics, four-dimensional space ("4D") is a geometric space with four dimensions. It typically is more specifically four-dimensional Euclidean space, generalizing the rules of three-dimensional Euclidean space. It has been studied by mathematicians and philosophers for over two centuries, both for its own interest and for the insights it offered into mathematics and related fields. The diagrams of Canadian mathematician H.S.M. Coxeter are higher-dimensional polytopes and root systems which are orthogonally projected onto the 2 dimensional surface. We have these projections as a reminiscent of the shadow of a 3d dimensional object, a pale representation.
interspecies communication