Infinity Mirrored Room - LEDs Forever" is a re-imagining of Yayoi Kusama's 1966 piece “Infinity Mirrored Room - Love Forever”. It brings it into the 21st-century through the use of RGB LEDs and interactivity to allow viewers to perceive an infinite “virtual” space in a breathtaking way.
Is it possible that a confined space can also be perceived as infinitely large? If so, does this make the space “virtual”...physically non-existent but within our own perception? In optics, a virtual image is one in which the outgoing rays from one point on the object never actually intersect at a point on a reflected surface. If you are half a meter in front of a mirror, your image will appear at a distance of half a meter behind the mirror. Our perception of a space that contains facing mirrors becomes infinite thanks to recursive virtual images.
With this piece, I wanted to construct an infinitely large "room" by taking advantage of recursive virtual images. Inside the room would exist a world of light: thousands (millions?) moving points of light would be orchestrated to permeate and color the dull vast emptiness of the infinite space. Since the infinite space itself exists only in the realm of photons (and our perception of them), it is only fitting to use light itself to occupy this world.
The term “virtual” has long existed in discussions around technology and artificial environments. For the last two decades, creating worlds that are artificial yet indistinguishably real has been a goal for digital visual artists since the tools have existed to create them. But these environments generally only exist as projections on a two-dimensional surface. Numerous techniques are used to trick our minds into believing that flat moving images on screens actually extend into the distance. These tricks range from software conventions such as motion parallax, to hardware techniques like head and eye tracking.
By contrast, “Infinity Mirrored Room - LEDs Forever” creates a virtual environment in an entirely analog way. LED light is not projected onto a screen, but onto the mirrored walls of a small but real three-dimensional space. The recursive virtual images of illuminated LEDs are perceived as extending forever into three dimensions. No software or technological tricks are employed to fool our minds into apprehending the infinitely large space. The optical properties of reflective surfaces themselves, as well as the nature or our visual perception, creates the illusion.
I did not want this virtual space to be completely static, so I devised a system to enable viewers to participate in the space by changing the motion of the patterns in unique ways. Each pattern has two modes, which can be toggled by the viewer. Additionally, the viewer can desaturate the patterns of color to plain white.
I wanted to give the audience a chance to “play” with the space, and I did so by utilizing touch sensors on the external walls of the room adjacent to the viewport, which modulate the light patterns. This means that in order to participate, viewers must interact with the physical boundaries of the room. This forces a contradiction between their visual perception of an infinitely large space and their senses of proprioception and touch...reminding them that the limitless volume of the “Infinity Mirrored Room” is simply an illusion.
To view high-resolution photos, please visit the Flickr Photoset
Context:
In 1966, artist Yayoi Kusama created “Infinity Mirrored Room - Love Forever”. The piece is a small room with viewports cut into the walls. Inside the room’s walls and floor are completely mirrored. The ceiling is studded with red, green, yellow, and white lamps arranged in a pattern. The lamps are flashed consecutively to produce a sense of movement. These lights are reflected in the mirrors below and to the sides, which are perceived as extending infinitely.
Kusama remade “Inifinity Mirrored Room - Love Forever” in 1994 as a rectangular structure approximately five feet tall. I was immediately inspired by this piece when I saw it at the Whitney Museum. It was shown in an exhibit entitled “Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era”. As a fan of much of the music of this period, I felt a particular fascination with many of the pieces, but none were as captivating to me as the Infinity Mirrored Room. It was more than just a light piece, it was it’s own self-contained universe of luminosity. The draw of the piece was undeniable, as there was a continuous line of eager museum-goers waiting for the chance to peek into Kusama’s infinite world. I, of course, waited in line three times to catch a fleeting glimpse of the piece. Before I left the museum I knew I wanted to recreate it using modern materials...and add a touch of interactivity.
Construction:
The mirrored room is constructed of 24" x 24" masonite boards, reinforced by metal wall joints, with plexiglass mirrors mounted internally. One wall has a 4" x 11" window cut out to act as a viewport. A 24" Color Kinetics iColor Tile sits at the bottom of the box, facing up. This is a manufactured 12 x 12 array of RGB LED's that are controlled programmatically via a custom Java application. The application displays an animated series of patterns designed by me, and are cycled randomly on a timer. The tile is driven via ethernet by a 12" G4 PowerBook running the Java application.
Mounted on the sides of the box adjacent to the viewport are capacitive touch sensors that enable the viewer to modulate the light patterns by touch. One sensor modifies the current pattern in some way (changes direction, color, pattern, etc.), while the other desaturates the color to Black & White. This provides an immersive way for the viewer to “play” with the infinite space by touching the exterior walls of the room...walls that seem not to exist when looking into the virtual infinite space.
Infinity Mirrored Room - LEDs Forever" is a re-imagining of Yayoi Kusama's 1966 piece “Infinity Mirrored Room - Love Forever”. It brings it into the 21st-century through the use of RGB LEDs and interactivity to allow viewers to perceive an infinite “virtual” space in a breathtaking way.
Is it possible that a confined space can also be perceived as infinitely large? If so, does this make the space “virtual”...physically non-existent but within our own perception? In optics, a virtual image is one in which the outgoing rays from one point on the object never actually intersect at a point on a reflected surface. If you are half a meter in front of a mirror, your image will appear at a distance of half a meter behind the mirror. Our perception of a space that contains facing mirrors becomes infinite thanks to recursive virtual images.
With this piece, I wanted to construct an infinitely large "room" by taking advantage of recursive virtual images. Inside the room would exist a world of light: thousands (millions?) moving points of light would be orchestrated to permeate and color the dull vast emptiness of the infinite space. Since the infinite space itself exists only in the realm of photons (and our perception of them), it is only fitting to use light itself to occupy this world.
The term “virtual” has long existed in discussions around technology and artificial environments. For the last two decades, creating worlds that are artificial yet indistinguishably real has been a goal for digital visual artists since the tools have existed to create them. But these environments generally only exist as projections on a two-dimensional surface. Numerous techniques are used to trick our minds into believing that flat moving images on screens actually extend into the distance. These tricks range from software conventions such as motion parallax, to hardware techniques like head and eye tracking.
By contrast, “Infinity Mirrored Room - LEDs Forever” creates a virtual environment in an entirely analog way. LED light is not projected onto a screen, but onto the mirrored walls of a small but real three-dimensional space. The recursive virtual images of illuminated LEDs are perceived as extending forever into three dimensions. No software or technological tricks are employed to fool our minds into apprehending the infinitely large space. The optical properties of reflective surfaces themselves, as well as the nature or our visual perception, creates the illusion.
I did not want this virtual space to be completely static, so I devised a system to enable viewers to participate in the space by changing the motion of the patterns in unique ways. Each pattern has two modes, which can be toggled by the viewer. Additionally, the viewer can desaturate the patterns of color to plain white.
I wanted to give the audience a chance to “play” with the space, and I did so by utilizing touch sensors on the external walls of the room adjacent to the viewport, which modulate the light patterns. This means that in order to participate, viewers must interact with the physical boundaries of the room. This forces a contradiction between their visual perception of an infinitely large space and their senses of proprioception and touch...reminding them that the limitless volume of the “Infinity Mirrored Room” is simply an illusion.
To view high-resolution photos, please visit the Flickr Photoset
Context:
In 1966, artist Yayoi Kusama created “Infinity Mirrored Room - Love Forever”. The piece is a small room with viewports cut into the walls. Inside the room’s walls and floor are completely mirrored. The ceiling is studded with red, green, yellow, and white lamps arranged in a pattern. The lamps are flashed consecutively to produce a sense of movement. These lights are reflected in the mirrors below and to the sides, which are perceived as extending infinitely.
Kusama remade “Inifinity Mirrored Room - Love Forever” in 1994 as a rectangular structure approximately five feet tall. I was immediately inspired by this piece when I saw it at the Whitney Museum. It was shown in an exhibit entitled “Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era”. As a fan of much of the music of this period, I felt a particular fascination with many of the pieces, but none were as captivating to me as the Infinity Mirrored Room. It was more than just a light piece, it was it’s own self-contained universe of luminosity. The draw of the piece was undeniable, as there was a continuous line of eager museum-goers waiting for the chance to peek into Kusama’s infinite world. I, of course, waited in line three times to catch a fleeting glimpse of the piece. Before I left the museum I knew I wanted to recreate it using modern materials...and add a touch of interactivity.
Construction:
The mirrored room is constructed of 24" x 24" masonite boards, reinforced by metal wall joints, with plexiglass mirrors mounted internally. One wall has a 4" x 11" window cut out to act as a viewport. A 24" Color Kinetics iColor Tile sits at the bottom of the box, facing up. This is a manufactured 12 x 12 array of RGB LED's that are controlled programmatically via a custom Java application. The application displays an animated series of patterns designed by me, and are cycled randomly on a timer. The tile is driven via ethernet by a 12" G4 PowerBook running the Java application.
Mounted on the sides of the box adjacent to the viewport are capacitive touch sensors that enable the viewer to modulate the light patterns by touch. One sensor modifies the current pattern in some way (changes direction, color, pattern, etc.), while the other desaturates the color to Black & White. This provides an immersive way for the viewer to “play” with the infinite space by touching the exterior walls of the room...walls that seem not to exist when looking into the virtual infinite space.
