Idea Space - a cyclic universe

This was an installation at Mediaruimte, Brussels in 2004, a simulation of a cyclic universe. Every frame 10000 new moving particles are added so that after several ten thousand "years" (1 rotation = 1 year) the space ended up as white cube, fully saturated with matter. Due to the way this cyclic nature has been coded it too created the paradoxical situation where the simulation never actually slows down even though the number of moving particles is approaching infinity. The lines are a visualization of the invisible moving attractors in that space and the inverse square law used to compute the particles trajectories.

As the particles move through space they become attracted by the various, initially randomly positioned gravitational centres. the force of attraction follows the classic "inverse square law" in physics, meaning a particle is a lot more influenced and accelerated by a close attractor than by ones further away. the more particles are in a highly active gravitational reqion of the space, the more clearly lines start to appear, showing the trajectory of these particles through space as well as time towards the locally strongest gravitational center.

>> karsten schmidt, 2004