The Labyrinth

Design

This installation is composed of three concentric circles of sheer fabrics that are suspended from above and rotate independently around their center. These function as transparent, hanging hallways that move and reinvent the labyrinth. Openings between the layers allows for easy movement between them. Floating at the center of the piece is a rotating tree. Lights from within and around the tree cast multiple forms of its colored shadows around and through the layers beyond it. Simultaneously projected imagery paints the walls of the entire space. As people move through The Labyrinth their shadows are cast into the layers of labyrinth that curves and captures their shapes in its walls.

Psychoactive Effects of Moving Hallways

The walls move at different speeds and directions as people spin them. This creates a delightful illusion of moving two speeds or directions at the same time. When you move into the next layer, the experience of the labyrinth instantly changes to match the movement of the layer. Depending on the movment and projections of the space, the labyrinth can be wildly chaotic and filled with laughter or serene and meditative.

Shadows, Perspective, and Infinite Truth

The following describes the original concept that inspired this piece, it now has evolved to forms and meanings well beyond its original vision. However for those interested, this is the seed that grew.

The true form of the tree is depicted in its shadows, and its images constantly transform as the tree spins. The reality of the tree is conveyed in each of these projections, and yet they are infinite in number and are quite different from one another at any given moment as it spins. Every screen that depicts the tree holds a different image based on its perspective. Our individual realities about the tree are held in these fleeting shadows, and so is all else we percieve as real. These shadows are not untrue or imperfect representations, rather, they are real and intrinsically beautiful as their own entities, separate from the body of the tree. Likewise, we are also real, however far from objective physics our truths may be. Our illusion is alive, for it dreams perceptions as realities that transform like shadows of the tree.