about lightbox

Lightbox is an installation that takes imagery and sound from the Antarctic and presents it to a Northen Hemisphere audience using a room converted into a low-tech visual communication device (the Camera Obscura). Video and data of the Aurora Australis (in the Southern Hemisphere), along with photographs from Scott Base in Antarctica, are treated digitally and then projected onto the walls of the gallery in which the Lightbox sits.

Lightbox made its debut at the Lightwave Festival in Dublin, Ireland between January and February 2009. This event invited some of the world’s most inspirational scientists, designers and artists to experiment with illumination and light.



Lightbox was initially created by researchers Antony Nevin and Karen Curley from Massey University's Institute of Communication Design in New Zealand. They wanted to explore how a Northern Hemisphere audience might experience the Aurora Australis by experimenting with patterns and multiple images, as seen through a Camera Obscura. This created a space for contemplation and encouraged the Festival audience to engage with science, the Aurora phenomenon and optics.
The Aurora occurs when charged particles riding on solar winds hit the earth’s magnetic field. The energy released can be seen at both Poles in the form of the Aurora Borealis in the North and the Aurora Australis in the South.


By standing inside the Lightbox people are surrounded by imagery that is inverted, refracted and combined through the use of multiple apertures. A star field of holes projects the Aurora in the pattern of constellations from the mid January Southern sky. Upon closer inspection each glowing pinpoint of light is, in fact, a tiny camera obscura showing the Antarctic scenes. As The Aurora Australis glows, clouds form and dissipate, the sun rises and sets and the moon races behind Mt Erebus. Lightbox fluxes and moves with a thousand tiny upside-down images of the Antarctic environment.


Lightbox was created in partnership with the New Zealand Government’s Antarctic program (AntarcticaNZ), The American NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and images filmed by Anthony Powell (a photographer and satellite communications technician at McMurdo Station). Sound artist Servando Barreiro was commissioned to design a sound scape based on recordings from hydrophones located on the Ekström ice shelf.

Lightbox is an evolving project. Antony has been using Lightbox to investigate analogy as a design strategy and how science and design can inform each other. Currently Antony is developing links with the possible World Heritage Star-Light Reserve at Mt St John in New Zealand.