Part avant-garde sculpture and part quixotic observatory, “Sunspace” evokes an elaborate drawing machine as the play of light sketches calligraphic arabesques onto the wall. When the sky is overcast, the buckled interior becomes an impassive white bulb, but visual stimulation cedes to an unexpected soundscape amplified by the architecture: rustling paper, parched lips, steady breathing.
In public remarks at the inauguration, Eliasson described “Sunspace” as a way to visualize time and relativity, noting that, “It does require a little bit of patience but the fact that you can see the actual color move if you spend 10 or 15 minutes in there is something very valuable because what you see is not the moving light, but [in fact] the rotation of the Earth as it travels around the sun.”