Immersed in Unfolding Complex Systems

What would it be like to walk into a real-life “Holodeck” or “Cerebro” and experience a stunning new world unlike anything seen before? Beyond this, what if we were able to experience hitherto unobservable aspects of nature, as environments into which the body cannot actually venture? In fact, these questions are on the minds of scientists and artists working together, right now, in the AlloSphere located in the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. We have in our hands an instrument that allows us to explore and interact with complex, high-dimensional data and systems—whether they be subatomic particles, the human brain, or entire synthetic ecosystems—as if they were fully immersive worlds.