Hypothetical question: what happens when there’s so much air pollution all the time that you can’t even see the sky at night? You attempt to recreate it and bring it to you.
Standing under an open night sky is like standing in an imax theater; you feel surrounded and you get a sense of limitless space. That’s the feeling I get when I’m standing under the night sky at my house, and it’s what I was trying to recapture with my Universe in a Box. The small size of the box makes the viewing experience an intimate one, and once inside the 24 mirrors bounce reflections and light around the viewer. The spaces in between the mirrors create an interesting juxtaposition of space by creating breaks on the panels themselves, as well as in the reflections. They’re multiplied in the mirrors around them which create even more dimensional space depending on where you’re sitting in the box.
The reflections of the light bulbs are also multiplied to make it seem like there are more then there actually are. They’re meant to replicate stars, but constellations weren’t the direct focus of the piece. They’re like stand in, domesticated stars.
You can do anything in this box: sit quietly, study, read and think about if there will ever be a need for a Universe in a Box because you can’t see the real one anymore.