The Polyopticon Series originated in exploration of the well known phenomenon of the camera obscura, as a way of logically extending the concept of the photograph. The intentions were to create an immediate visual experience for multiple viewers, to fill the interior space the as much imagery on as many surfaces as possible, and for the imagery taken as a whole to involve the complexity of multiple viewpoints, scales, and directions.

Polyopticon VI was installed in an abandoned house near Ucross, WY during a residency at the Ucross Foundation. Over a period of three weeks, several variations on multiple aperture and mirror views projected a changing interpretation of landscape and weather on the cracked plaster and woodwork of a dusty domestic space.

Polyopticon IV was installed at ArtSpace in New Haven, CT in May and June 2007. It used four apertures and mirrors to meld 4 separate, slightly different views of a single building into an apparently gigantic representation of an apartment block. The arresting red color of the brick, the uncanny perspective tapering up the wall to the ceiling and down into the floor created a vertiginous zone where the changing light and passing clouds modified the image, both in the sky and reflected in the building’s windows.

Sixteen Windows, the first in the Polyopticon Series, transformed a 19th century New England meeting house by illuminating its ceiling with 16 projections of the sky and neighboring buildings.

Rolling changes in the sky can be seen reflected in the repeated windows of the building as well as in the narrow strip of sky (doubled in reflection on the floor and at the top of the wall).

Looking up at the high ceiling, viewers see a constantly moving live projection of the sky, illusioinistically opening the roof of the space.

The earliest studies for the Polyopticon Series aimed at turning the camera obscura into a human-scaled space in which the images could be see with the naked eye with a minimum of time for adjustement to the relative darkness.