ParaBox case study
Think inside the ParaBox that expands reality instead of closing it in
- My role
- Concept, fabrication, electronics, mapping
- Built with
- Arduino, TouchDesigner, Fusion 360, laser cutting
- Shown
- InterPlay, UAL CCI · Copeland Gallery · 372 visits logged
Every infinity mirror gives itself away
ParaBox is a paradoxical installation exploring how perception can expand the limited reality we experience.
Inside the mirrored dodecahedron, a confined form opens into the illusion of infinite space. LED edges reflect across layered mirror surfaces, multiplying beyond a clear point of origin until it becomes difficult to distinguish between source, reflection, and perceived space.
It took two builds. ParaWear on a head, then ParaBox for the gallery, motorised, silver two-way, ~1,400 LEDs, sixty authored seconds. At InterPlay, 372 people put their head inside and nearly one in five stayed the full sixty, still looking for where the light started.
Sixty seconds, and the origin keeps moving
Suspended dodecahedron. The work is activated through presence. When the viewer places their head inside, they enter a shifting environment rather than simply looking at an object from the outside. The sequence runs from one readable point of light to a space with no single origin. A light you can follow, then denser reflections, then a fifth of a turn so the same light changes planes. You play by looking.
The title draws from “para-”, suggesting something beyond, beside, or parallel. In this sense, ParaBox points toward realities that exist alongside the familiar one, turning a small structure into a larger experienced world.
Making the first box, small enough to wear
Plan it, joint it, light it, solder it, jam the guts into 1.5 cm, wear it. Fusion turned the cardboard guess into dimensions I could cut and stack, modelling the outer and inner shells, the gap, connectors, mirrors and electronics before anything got cut.
The sketch was clean. The joints were not
Buttons, breath, fans, a small box inside. The plan lived on paper first, and it promised geometry the material never gave me for free. Building it meant solving the corners, with wooden strips in the seams so twelve pentagons meet without collapsing.
Everything had to fit in 1.5 cm
The outside staying clean was non-negotiable, so every other requirement lost to it. Layouts on paper, then a cardboard pentagon with the real parts dropped in. Arduino, battery, sensors and player, all packed into the gap so nothing bulges the form.
The whole piece depends on joints this small
Data, power and ground. Three connections across 2.7 mm of strip. Helping hands, the finest tip I had, and no real second attempt. Overheat one pad and the strip is scrap, and every LED downstream of it goes dark with it.
Three material tests, one deliberate trade-off
Infinity depth with a bare strip. Milky glass that softens or hides the source. An opening that lets light out on demand. Those loops locked slim coated LEDs and silver two way over black for ParaWear. Silver won on bounce, and I took the cost knowingly. Your face leaks back into the infinity. Depth mattered more than disappearing.
ParaWear worked, and proved it needed a room
Small, taped, and finished enough to wear. Hard to get in and out. No spin. LEDs only where the size allowed. The first finished paradox, on a body. Every one of those limits was an argument for building it again at scale.
Rebuilding it big enough to stand in front of
A gallery needed a place you walk up to, not something you share on your face. Hygiene, room and presence all asked for a bigger shell. Upgraded LEDs on every face, a spinning inner form, and a TouchDesigner sequence instead of sensors.
One ring carries the entire inner shell
Laser-cut mirrors lock differently here, tabs and slots instead of tape. The top ring is the only mount, holding inner layer to outer layer and both toward the ceiling. That frees the faces for more screen and leaves a clean circle looking up.
A fifth of a turn, and the light changes plane
This is what solves the problem silver two-way created. As the inner structure slowly rotates, the relationships between reflections reorganize. What first appears stable begins to change, causing space to shift around the observer and making orientation, depth, and time feel fluid, so the origin stays unfindable even with your face in the picture. ParaBox hangs, so the electronics live on top with the motors, drivers and the rats nest. Room to build the spin. Surface transducers turn the shell into sound.
Nearly one in five stayed for the whole sixty seconds
InterPlay is the UAL Creative Computing Institute’s end-of-year exhibition at Copeland Gallery in Peckham, a room of installations, kinetic sculpture and audiovisual work all competing for the same attention. ParaBox got its own dark corner, from the private view through three public days, one person at a time. The bar was simple. Hold someone long enough that they stop trying to solve the box. The median stay was twenty seconds. But 67 people stayed for the entire sixty-second sequence, and eight were still there past three minutes.
Sensors were the obvious call. I cut them.
ParaWear ran on sensors, but a body sensor that misreads in a dark corner fails silently. The piece just looks broken, and nobody is standing there to explain it. So presence only starts the run and every second after that is authored. Flat video goes into TouchDesigner and comes out as live control across fourteen hundred LEDs.
It cost me the responsive version of the piece and bought one that ran unattended for four days. I would make that trade again. Choosing the boring reliable system over the clever one is most of what putting work in public actually is.