Spacetime is an interactive experience of the evolution of a complex bicontinuous structure of two immiscible fluids. By clicking inside the application’s window with your mouse or touching the display of your touch-device, the structure evolves locally in time. The evolution is driven by the surface tension of the interface of the two fluids, which results in a continuous reduction of the interface area and leads to self-similar structures. The process was mathematically described by a Cahn-Hilliard equation, which was numerically solved by an adaptive Finite Element Method on the high performance computer JURECA at Jülich Supercomputing Centre. The resulting complex 3D structure was transformed into a set of images by rendering the fluid-fluid interface with the raytracer POV-Ray. In spacetime you control the local blending and colouring of these pre-rendered images.

The download includes executables for 64-bit versions of Linux, Windows and macOS. A mobile version for Android also called “spacetime” is available at Google Play Store.

See the included file “readme.txt” for detailed information about the user interface and compiling your own executable.

Note: macOS users probably have to run the application from a terminal, since double-clicking the executable in “Finder” sets the wrong working path.