The concept I wish to create would be an infinity mirror view box. I wanted to create one showcasing various shapes with led outlines, and even hopefully one with a different background to the typical black void.
I was initially partially inspired to do this by one of the early light art pieces we were shown, where it had a few light bulbs and quite a few mirrors causing the illusion of a large void filled with only lightbulbs. That reminded me of certain areas I’ve seen in media I’ve consumed, where it’s a ‘digital’ plane, filled with mere simple repeating 3D shapes and simple light. I’ve put some examples below to better express the idea.
These type of environments are some I’ve always found pretty cool, so replicating the style, with a bit of a simpler take and more lights sounded like a good time. Though, there are a few concerns I’ve had with this project idea.
First, El Wire is currently my chosen light of choice, as I felt the way they seemed to glow without emanating a large pool of light around them seemed to reflect a lot of how the light seen in these areas tend to be. But, El wire does seem to require skill with soldering and wire management under certain scenarios. If I ran into one of those situations I would need to put forth some effort in learning and tracking down the needed equipment. I am also left with a small concern the brightness of the wire could be not enough depending on what I try to do, so if anyone has any particular led recommendations that may be a viable alternative or good backup to patch any holes El Wire leaves, that would be appreciated.
Secondly, it’s hard to know if the mirror trick idea I had for the background would work out. I think the very likely scenario is that the background becomes a single square in the infinite space of the mirrors, or it is reflected in strange ways eventually causing a very strange design. I am perfectly willing to simply create my idea without the background bonus, but I did want to try to see how the mirrors interact with each other and try to make it work. But I do foresee a few snags, such as potentially cutting the mirrors.
This does leave me with a few questions
1.) If anyone has any experience with these few concerns I’ve brought up, what would you recommend for potentially amending them ahead of time?
2.) Is there any other potential issues with this idea that you see that I didn’t catch?
3.) How does the overall idea for a project sound?
I think the overall project sounds very cool. I always love illusions in art and making the space feel different than the actual materials that make it up. I feel like when you’re making the design it would be cool to mess around with different shapes that you form the mirrors into. I see right now your sketch shows it as kind of a rectangle, but I think if that doesn’t give you the results you’re looking for turning it into a triangle would be neat as well.
I think I’ll definitely give different shapes a shot! I admittedly hadn’t considered it at all, possibly because most examples I saw were typically flat rectangles or squares. But using a triangle, or something like an hexagon could lead to a very interesting reflective pattern!
I’ve always loved the infinite mirror illusion! I don’t know if you’ve given any thought as to what shapes you should use, but there’s one called the Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion that I think could work well with this. I don’t know if you’ll be able to get the angles to work, but here are a few youtube videos that show/explain it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWfFco7K9v8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKpOKXAVjGo
Hope these give you some inspiration!
I really like this idea. The basement of my house growing up had 2 very large mirrors on opposing walls that created this same infinite void effect that was very trippy to walk between the mirrors. I’m not sure of what scale you are thinking, but I think the larger the better in this sense so the audience can try to immerse themself into it rather than experience it from the outside looking in.
I think that your idea is definitely going to be difficult but it’ll be pretty cool once you start working on it. I an interested to see if you have thought of a size estimate for how big you want this piece to be as well as if you have a certain color scheme. I think it would be cool if you stuck with the dark eerie color scheme of the pictures that you have within this post.
If you are concerned about needing some LEDs, you can always use a microcontroller and some 5mm or 3mm LEDs from adafruit. If you don’t have any experience with that sort of stuff, you could probably manipulate wire light led strands, which are essentially a thin string of LEDs. If brightness is an issue with the EL wire, you may be able to add a little extra voltage to the supply; however, that is not always a great idea as it could ruin the lights.
Unfortunately, I am not as proficient in ECE to give you any sort of advice regarding the types of lights and their configurations, however, I’d like to mention that you probably don’t want to take a bulb with too soft of a glow.
I can suppose that your model will have a relatively small size. Therefore, I think something like this will look best without light pollution (i.e., in a dark room). In that case, if the light source is too soft, then we’ll struggle to see anything because a mirror can only reflect light that falls on it.
So, I guess, the only way to go with it is to play around with different light sources
But the idea is worthy of attention
I like the idea – I guess a backup for EL wire would be LED strips possibly? I’m not fully understanding the mirror stuff, but I would love to see the progress once you start working on it.
This sounds like a really interesting variation on the standard infinity mirror. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with as you start to play with this!
It’s a bit of a pain to solder EL wire, although it’s doable. You can also use different types of connectors which can ease the pain of soldering. Here are a few examples:
https://www.coolneon.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/2020-CoolNeon-catalog.pdf (look in Connectors)
https://www.ellumiglow.com/electroluminescence/electroluminescent-wire/el-wire-accessories
https://www.coolight.com/Connectors-Heat-Shrink-Lead-Wire-s/3.htm
Wow! Sounds like it’s going to be impressive. I have some EL wire of varying thicknesses if you want to practice soldering on that. You may want to consider EL wire tape if the layers are to be flush against each other. Or maybe the spacing between layers might create a better effect?