Glistering on the horizon, stellar bodies rise from the Playa, the largest with an inner chamber ripening the fruits of reflection. A rippling skin of convex mirrors is multiplied across the main star’s surface like a network of cells, with every viewer held at the nucleus .. framed in the vision and creations of our community- fractal portraits of a fractal organism.

Unique connections and self-similarity on all scales of magnification reflect the fractal nature of living organisms – galaxies, constellations, trees, the historical metropolis, the human brain, bacteria. Shared dreams magnetically draw us to gather, compress, and radiate out again; the historical metropolis arose organically, as a fractal, living web of small (pedestrian) and large-scale interactions and networks. The planned cities of the 20th century erased the small-scale aspect to create the car city, a place of large-scale movement and function. The spaces of personal connection and the human value/sacred disappeared from the new urban template..the plaza, the shrine, the telephone booth, a literal de-humanization.Through cycles of history, we have exteriorized the small -  our living nature,  into the large -  our living environments. Housed in a fractal body and embedded in a fractal universe, the return to the polis of the personal seems marked on our maps .

Curvilinear, round, symmetrical yet organic – the budding forms of the spherical mirrors hint at the promise of creative ripening and perhaps a re-emergence of the organic city.

Gazing at the stellar body,  our images bounce off the mirrors to intersect, then widen exponentially into eternity. A moment of reflection, beginning with one, transforms into Infinity. A ‘Constellation of One’ poses the question – what do we send into ‘forever’? Looking through the lens – what does the collective eye / “I” envision?

Diagrams show the external frame w/o mirrors. The white circle indicates the door to the interior.

The top diagram shows the proposed changes in structure for Burning Man 2011, while the bottom shows the original structure built for the festival in 2010

‘Constellation of One‘ is a stellated (‘star’) tetrahedron..the main structure is a 3-sided pyramid with 3 smaller pyramids attached to the the large faces.

Each equilateral face measures 12′ x 12′ x 12′ (3.6 x 3.6 x 3.6 m) ; this is the actual footprint of the structure resting on the ground. The attached ‘tips’ are smaller equilateral pyramids

Apex/actual height = approx. 10.5′ (3.15 m) .

Diameter /from one (small 6′) pyramid tip to the opposite side = 14′ (4.5 m)

A small opening/door in the main structure  gives access to the interior.