On Dimensionality

Robin’s blog about dimensionality as an innate aspect of being really sparked my interest. More specifically, I was intrigued by this notion that, even though it is mathematically possible to create more than three dimensions, we -humans- cannot readily perceive such an n-dimensional world. Our capacity limit is at n=3. 

In “Dimensionality?” this is nicely illustrated by the work of Julius von Bismarck and Benjamin Maus who created the kinetic sculpture “Round About Four Dimensions”(2023) to aid the audience visualise a tesseract, also known as a four-dimensional cube. To achieve this, they created a hypercube that performs a four-dimensional rotation, which seemingly causes the cube’s shadow to invert[1]. Even if we can’t fully comprehend how this works, its effect is directly observable, thereby proving in a way its existence. 

What fascinates me about this is the relationship between dimensionality and awareness. As stated before, there exist many more dimensions than we can understand/perceive. Even more significantly, since we can only visualise three dimensions, every entity with more than three dimensions is -initially- perceived as a three-dimensional being. That is until an effect that is unique to its dimensionality is perceived. Then, we can begin to comprehend what is means to be a being of n-dimensions. This can be closely related to Robin’s description of “Flatland”(1884), a short story by Edwin A. Abbott, where two-dimensional beings start to question their “flatness” after making contact with a three-dimensional sphere.

Imagine a creature with a body made of glass and an external source of light following it around. The form of its body is not of significant importance -it could be as simple as a cube or as intricate as an assemblage of intertwining glass planes. What is of utmost importance is the source of light that is attached to the creature. A pulsing light that is not strong enough to fully reveal the creature’s body, yet not too weak to be unable to perceive the creature’s existence. Once you approach to have a closer look, something strange, yet familiar, happens. You cannot see the creature without seeing your own and your surroundings’ reflection on its body. In this moment, it’s almost as if yourself, the creature and the environment are part of a single, multidimensional indistinguishable entity. If only for a brief moment, the barriers between the self, the other and the surroundings are dissolved. After all, we might not be one and the same, but we are in this together[4].