The Idea

The actual world we live in has three dimensions of space plus one of time, so people often refer to time as the fourth dimension, but I am not talking about a maze that extends over time. In fact, I am not even talking about the actual world we live in! I am imagining a different world, one that has four dimensions of space (plus one of time). In that world, you can build four-dimensional mazes, just as you can build three-dimensional ones here.

How can you see a four-dimensional maze?

As a three-dimensional person, you see the world by having it projected onto a two-dimensional retina, i.e., by receiving a two-dimensional set of colors. Similarly, a four-dimensional person would see the world by having it projected onto a three-dimensional retina.

It is difficult to display a three-dimensional set of colors on a two-dimensional computer screen, so I decided to consider black to be transparent and arrange for most of the world to be black. That reduced the original solid block of color to a set of three-dimensional lines. Then I created a three-dimensional vector display using stereo pairs of images.

Thus, it is possible to observe the four-dimensional maze world exactly as if you had one four-dimensional eye.