# The Fabric of the Universe: Exploring the cosmic web in 3D prints and woven textiles

## TL;DR

This paper combines art and science to visualize and interpret the cosmic web using 3D printing and weaving, revealing hidden structures and creating tangible models of dark matter distributions.

## Contribution

It introduces novel methods for transforming simulation data into physical 3D printed models and woven textiles, bridging scientific visualization with artistic expression.

## Key findings

- Discovery of wall-like features in cosmic web models
- Development of a pipeline for 3D printing cosmological structures
- Creation of a large-scale textile installation representing cosmic filaments

## Abstract

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.