Navigating in Place: exhibit at Generative Art Conference

The space we inhabit influences our perception, constrains our thoughts, and shapes our behaviour. In psychology experiments, larger spaces facilitate creative use of everyday objects, while arrangement of furniture affects the use of those spaces, for example for discussion vs. presentation. In these times of physical isolation, confined spaces are detrimental to mental health. How do we perceive space in these confining times, and overcome these restrictions to open our minds to a wider, more expressive environment?

We examine the human cognitive map that evolves with generative spaces, as humans enter virtual contexts and experience different functional spaces. Neuroscientists have found neurons called place cells in the hippocampus part of the brain that fires whenever humans enter a particular location. These cells remap when humans passage to different contexts, and rescale when they enter the same room but at a different scale. In between these transitions, place cells also replay their own prior activity as humans learn from their own navigation in space. These neuroscience insights are captured by abstract models of place cell networks as humans traverse virtual spaces that generate complex open structures depending on audience interaction within their boundaries.

The web experience takes the audience through procedurally generated spaces generated from player interaction. As the player moves virtually in space, a cognitive map of shape architectures representing place cells are shown above the player activated when stepping into a particular space. New spaces lead to remapping of the shapes to new locations, and trigger them to replay their activity when players remain stationary. When players visit certain areas, the confined spaces become wider and the shapes become more expressive, generating patterns that reflect the larger spaces and diverse sensory inputs they listen to. Finally the audience can begin to see the connection between the complexity of spaces they inhabit and their own evolving neural coding for these spaces.