Toronto artist builds massive infinity mirror inside his apartment

In the middle of Justin Hawley's Toronto apartment stands a large and unique piece of art.

"This is a seven-foot tall infinity mirror dodecahedron," Hawley explained with a laugh.

A project he started nine months ago for a design festival that has since been delayed, it now takes up a large part of his living space. he piece is six-feet wide, six-feet deep, and on its base, stands seven-feet tall. It consists of 12 pentagon-shaped, polycarbonate panels with nearly 1,000 programmed LED lights inside.

"I have nowhere to put it right now," he said. "But also, it kind of brightens my day."

When turned off, the exterior appears like a mirror, but when the lights are turned on, it bursts with vibrant colours.

"The analogy I like to use is when you're watching those movies where the FBI is interrogating someone through a one way mirror - that's how it works," he said. "So, you can actually see in through [it] when the lights are on but when they're off you can't see."

Hawley built the frame, joints and base, using a 3-D printer in his apartment. "Each of those parts took like 10 hours or more — some of them 16 hours per print."

By day, Hawley is a webcast producer, quite literally working in the shadow of his creation. 

The award-winnint light artist said he's seen similar creations online, though on a much smaller scale.

"I'm always trying to push the boundaries, I don't like anything ordinary so if I could make it as extreme as possible and actually make it work then that's what I wanted to do."

The theme of the exhibition was climate change, so Hawley programmed five different settings for the LED lights inside. He says the colour themes are meant to replicate things humans could lose to climate change, including icebergs, the Northern Lights, and sunsets.

The size and scope of the design was just one of the challenges with this project. Hawley used design software to create 3D renderings and handbuilt a small-scale model.

"I think that I wanted to make something really futuristic and I wanted to sort of have a bit of a retro-futuristic feel to it to. I like a lot of synthoid music and sort of 80's aesthetic so I tried to do that and I just kinda wanted something that really wasn't around. I think I've only found one other version of this in the world."

Hawley documented the design and build process, posting a video to YouTube meant to inspire and instruct others on how he managed to do it.

"This is sort of a community of people that loves to do things," he said. "Just the do-it-yourself community, so I figured why not share the knowledge. I don't think knowledge really spreads unless you share it."

For now, the piece will remain in Hawley's apartment, but he still plans to show it in a couple of festivals and hopes it could one day be a gallery or museum installation.

"I want to make a really large black hole," he said.

"You won't physically get sucked in to it, but it will look like a black hole."