Rails --- Interactive Moire Sculpture by Larry Akers

Rails is a mixed media hanging sculpture that exhibits several moire effects (interfering patterns) using patterned and reflective materials. The base pattern is from a media storage tower mounted at angles over a color-graded background. The outer layer is a reflective light diffuser for a florescent ceiling fixture.

Though the piece is structurally static, when the viewer moves around it, a variety of moire and reflective effects animate the piece. The vertical lines appear to side-slip and then tumble over some cliffs. A fine detail is that reflected in the outer grid, the dark vertical lines move along each of the different horizontal bars of the grid at different paces, like traffic moving at different speeds in different lanes of a freeway. The entire
image dissolves into a silvery mirage when viewed at an extreme angle.