Our Microcosmic Orrery, a jewelled machine not of planets and stars but of people and times, is a particular kind of time machine that travels from place to place carrying doppelgangers, imprints, palimpsests, and ghosts of the people it meets. The installation stands about 2m x 3m x 1.5m high, with a walkway and chairs at fixed locations. It refracts the geometries and materials of the age of iron and crystal, and the mechanical tropes of Victorian science bearing a residue of the occult. Rounding the Microcosmic Orrery from one side, you see a miniature stage in an ornate box made of crystal, wood, and metal, with 6-10 chairs 2m from its face. After seating yourself, you find yourself projected inside the Orrery, in a mixture of real and projected objects, acquaintances and personages, material and immaterial textures, all in concerted movement. Unlike its mechanical forebears, the action in this amodern orrery of time reflects a specific composition as well as the contingent movement of the visitors.
The installation doubles as a sculptural reflection of an architectural model and as a miniature theater for an event composed as a "partial object", completed only when it is sited just so, and the visitors have taken their seats...