The Fabric of the Universe: Exploring the Cosmic Web in 3D Prints and Woven Textiles

We introduce The Fabric of the Universe, an art and science collaboration focused on exploring the cosmic web of dark matter with unconventional techniques and materials. We discuss two of our projects in detail. First, we describe a pipeline for translating three-dimensional (3D) density structures from N-body simulations into solid surfaces suitable for 3D printing, and present prints of a cosmological volume and of the infall region around a massive cluster halo. In these models, we discover wall-like features that are invisible in two-dimensional projections. Going beyond the sheer visualization of simulation data, we undertake an exploration of the cosmic web as a three-dimensional woven textile. To this end, we develop experimental 3D weaving techniques to create sphere-like and filamentary shapes and radically simplify a region of the cosmic web into a set of filaments and halos. We translate the resulting tree structure into a series of commands that can be executed by a digital weaving machine, and present a large-scale textile installation.