Drawing Hyperspace. From Pencil to Computer Graphics

Abstract

In 1885, E.A. Abbott published Flatland in Great Britain, a book destined to be widely read beyond the English-speaking world. It tells the adventures of a square who discovers dimensions beyond the third Euclidean dimension. The writer, a mathematics professor, is aware that, in those years, mathematicians were becoming interested in geometric figures beyond three dimensions. Among the objects studied, the most famous was undoubtedly the four-dimensional cube, called the ‘tesseract’ or ‘hypercube’. The mathematician Coxeter’s book, in the 1920s, opened the door to higher dimensions. Many artists around the world learned of these studies through their respective mathematicians, through translations of Flatland into many languages, and through Charles Hinton’s books on the fourth dimension, which would also be explored by the Cubists in France and by the work of Salvador Dalí. When, after the Second World War, the computer began its unstoppable journey, a few years later, a way to visualize what could be achieved with it was developed, and the hypercube came back into fashion: in short, a story that comes from afar and still looks far ahead.