The entire interior space of the meeting house was darkened with custom made cloth shades. Each shade allowed a lens to project the image of the sky and horizon outside onto the ceiling immediately above the window. The projections overlap to fill the ceiling with a continuous panorama of clouds, treetops, and the neighboring skyline.

A balcony surrounded three sides of the interior, and banks of windows on the main floor as well as the balcony level allowed for two long sweeps of projected imagery on each side of the building. On the lower level, the projection was adjusted to include the neighboring structures, while the upper story’s projections were limited to sky and treetops. Viewers were free to roam throughout the space.

Although the imagery projected by small, simple lenses was not bright, viewers coming into the darkened space from outside could see details after a minute or two of adjustment. After 10 or 20 minutes, many more details emerged, and the process continued for more than an hour as viewers’ pupils continued to dilate. Continuous motion of clouds and swaying branches animated the projections. Most viewers lingered for an hour or more and returned repeatedly.

Each window contained a mirror and lens mounted in a custom made stand that penetrated the dark-out covering.

The Lecture Hall at the Vermont Studio Center was originally a Congregational church before becoming an opera house and then the Town Hall for Johnson, VT. The VSC kindly allowed it to be given over to this installation for 4 weeks in August, 2006.

Sixteen Windows filled a large interior space with colorful, moving imagery that wove together apparent panoramas of the sky and buildings outside. This time lapse shows the underside of the balcony with moving weather and activity outside.

Because the images were projected from two different levels onto the large upper ceiling and onto the lower ceiling beneath the balcony, the illusory sky was spread acorss a strange discontinuous expanse.

This time lapse shows the natural changes in light on the ceiling of the space as clouds pass overhead outside and viewers enter and move about the space.