2015
Tunnel Vision
Reflections on material reuse and the aesthetics of trash.
00 / Summary
Tunnel Vision was a large, narrowing tunnel, covered internally with mirrors. Made almost entirely from reclaimed material, the mirror-tunnel challenged visitors to reflect upon the aesthetics of trash, and the possibilities of discarded materials.
01 / Concept
Things of trash
Our project was founded on the philosophy of reduce, reuse, recycle, and on the assumption that we (as a society) do not give enough credence to the materials we discard. We recovered discarded timber, panels and shards of broken mirrors from a scrapyard, and textiles rejected for minor manufacturing faults. Materials with plenty of useful life left in them. With our hands we gave these materials a new shape, and a new function to inhabit. With electronics we gave them life.
From initial ideation to exhibition, the installation was made almost entirely from reclaimed materials — all except electronics, fasteners and adhesives.
Rather than disguising their origins completely, the construction transformed these mismatched remnants into the visual and structural substance of the work.
02 / Trashformation
Four metres of leftovers
The final artefact was a roughly four-metre tunnel built from four progressively smaller wooden sections. Its changing dimensions forced visitors from an almost room-sized entrance into a much tighter crawlspace.
The sections could be stored inside one another, resembling Russian nesting dolls. This telescopic construction made the large installation manageable inside a shared workshop and considerably easier to transport.
Materials were abundant — and practically free — so the greatest obstacle was exhibition logistics.
Hundreds of irregular mirror fragments were attached across the dark interior, alongside foil, textiles, found objects and coloured LEDs. Motion sensors made the lighting responsive and encouraged investigation; movement through one half of the tunnel activated lights toward the opposite end.
Early ideas about mirrored dreamscapes and changing scale helped shape the tunnel, but the irregularity of the reclaimed materials ultimately made measuring, cutting, adapting and improvising just as important to its final form.
03 / Exhibition
A tunnel became a room
The mirror-tunnel provided a space for visitors to reflect, both literally and metaphorically. The narrowing geometry restricted movement while fragmented mirrors multiplied the lights, objects and occupants around them. What interested me retrospectively, however, is that visitors did not always use the installation as we expected.
Children often treated it as an obstacle and raced through. Adults tended to stay longer. Near the end of the exhibition, groups of people started entering the tunnel and sat down on the floor to talk to each other, describing its atmosphere as interesting or relaxing. One visitor experienced it as isolated, safe and almost cave-like; another found the space claustrophobic.
The contrast between exterior and interior also became part of the encounter. The bleak and boring exterior concealed a dense field of fragmented mirrors and coloured light, and the reactions of people emerging from it attracted new visitors.
Perhaps the clearest result came after the exhibition had supposedly ended: when we went to take our project down, there were still people inside and they wished to stay there longer.
We had designed the installation around movement through the tunnel, but visitors found their own ways of observing, resting and inhabiting it. By no means a failure. To the contrary, visitors had greater interest and patience than expected. Enough to explore the sensations of our work in different ways. Our project became a place people chose to inhabit.
04 / Additional media
Gallery
