Parallax
Collaboration with Ryan Pearl
Parallax is a colorful LED-lit icosahedral mirror box inscribed with twenty interrelated views into speculative illustrated worlds.
The structural parts of the piece are machined out of black delrin plastic, and more or less completely full of the wiring for the lights. Each edge hides LED lights which illuminate the etched designs on the clear acrylic faces. Each acrylic panel is sandwiched between two thin semi-silvered mirrors, creating a tunnel illusion on each face as well as a chaotic series of internal reflections.
The faces themselves compose a non-linear comic. Because each panel might be read in any order and can be viewed alongside multiple distinct collections of neighbors, they tend to interact more as relations, categories, and foils of each other rather than explicit narrative elements.
On display at The Exploratorium in San Francisco.
Lit etching detail. There's only one instance of the drawing, but it's repeated from the mirror-tunnel effect.
Assembly! Keeping track of which panel was which was great fun.
You can see the wiring of the LEDs here. Even with only half of the icosahedron assembled, the reflections cast by the thing are disorienting.
First light!
Shhh, they're sleeping.