Modern Spin on Plato's Cave Explores the Limits of 3D Reality

In his version of The Allegory of the Cave, Greek artist and photographer Yiannis Biliris takes Plato’s allegory for a spin. Biliris incorporates theories such as quantum mechanics and multiverse into the mix, blending it with some mesmerizing kaleidoscopic editing. Detached skyscrapers float in the sky, cityscapes face their mirrors, and illuminated buildings become a geometric matrix of lights. The perceived concept is that our 3D reality is only a sliver of existing dimensions and reality.

In The Allegory of the Cave, Plato asks the reader to imagine a cave. In it, shackled prisoners can only see shadows cast on a wall by a fire, and echoes from voices of people they cannot see. When one prisoner is freed to walk into the sun, he cannot handle the light of this new reality. Plato meant to point out how humans do not truly comprehend reality but can aspire to it. But it has also been likened to breaking out of a collective hallucination, like a simulated virtual reality. Like Plato’s cave allegory, Biliris's version it is not meant to represent actual scenarios, but designed to get us thinking of higher thought, dimensions, and multiverses.

Explore more of Yiannis Biliris’s work, click here.

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