These 91 Undulating Mirrors Will Boggle Your Eyes

When you think about all of the sensory delights you’d find at a music festival, a mirror doesn’t really pop to the top of your mind. However, this team of architects Adam Cigler and Petr Vacek came up with a way to make mirrors the most fascinating thing there.

This art installation called “Reflection” was born out of a public call at PrusaLabs (the ones who make Prusa 3D Printers). They have a makerspace in their factory, and were willing to fund a big impressive project with materials, space, and skill.

The results you see are the culmination of 6 months of hard work between Adam, Petr, and the team of people at PrusaLab. It drew a constant crowd at Signal festival, with over 60,000 people coming to view it.

Let’s jump into the construction a little bit. You can find the whole breakdown here, but I think there are a few really cool items to point out.

In total, there are 91 individual mirrors, controlled by 182 servos. Each mirror is individually controlled, but on the back end the whole thing is split into modules of just a few mirrors. It takes 6 raspberry pi boards to pull everything together and make it all communicate.

Of course being made at the PrusaLab means plenty of 3d printing, as you can see in the design and prototype above. There was also plenty of laser cutting and cnc as well. 3D printing isn’t a perfect tool for every job, for example the back frame that it all connects to is CNC milled from plywood (seen below).

All in all, this thing is incredible looking while in motion. Seriously, if you haven’t watched the video yet, go check it out.