If you haven’t read the book yet, I’m tempted to warn you against opening the visualization. Part of the joy of reading this book is letting your mind’s eye run wild, and I fear if I read it for the first time after toying with this site, I’d be remembering the cities rather than conjuring them.
That is the exact problem with the city of Dinipro.
Citizens of this city high in the sky imagine it so fully in their minds that no one there needs to open their eyes to walk the streets and live their normal lives.
But if one makes the mistake of opening their eyes and tries to see the city directly, they would immediately fall through the clouds to the ground deep below.
I heartily recommend the audiobook, narrated by John Lee.
The book is a trip and the dreamy sort of narration matched it perfectly. My wife and I would spend evenings listening to one city at a time, on a walk around our little park, one headphone in each ear. I don't know if it was just the environment or the time in our lives, but we both really look back fondly on this book.
I read the book decades ago, then I lost it in one of the many relocations. I always thought I should buy it again but never acted on the idea... A few years ago, I was walking by an antiquarian, and noticed a thin unmarked gray spine. I entered, picked it up, paid, and walked away.
PS I didn't open the gallery. Nice idea but I don't care about visualizing something I should feel.
In fact, having a physicalized 3D representation of the cities is IMHO antithetical to the text. I don't think OP ever stopped to ask if there was more to Calvino's work than 'cool city descriptions'.
Aphantasia can be cured by deliberately engaging the imagination even when nothing is seen - you might not see anything at first but eventually you gain the ability through letting go of external awareness and developing the imagination pathways.
How Opus 5.5 imagines these cities is a question for Opus. The real experience is how we imagine - and I believe there are no two people who have exactly the same mental image of an invisible city.
> I’d be remembering the cities rather than conjuring them
Having looked at some of them (and it being one of my favorite books) ... it won't do that. These visualizations are as terrible as they are unnecessary.
Maybe the interactive link in the article for the optic focus can lead you on a fun journey instead. And the bottom-right of every visualization is a link to yet another fun diorama to explore.
It's a techie creating the torment nexus but the imagination version. No need to picture in your mind the invisible cities! Time to make them visible!!!
Talk about missing the entire point of the piece of literature.
