This artwork, a collaboration between Plebian Design, Hypersonic Engineering and Design, Patten Studio and Sosolimited, celebrates our abstraction of nature’s infinite complexity into patterns through the scientific process—and through our perceptions. It brings to light the similarity of patterns in our universe, across all scales of space and time.

This sculptural ribbon—10 feet wide and 90 feet in length, and made of 3,600 tiles of LCD glass—winds through the five-story atrium of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. It runs on roughly 75 watts (less power than a laptop computer). Animations are created by independently varying the transparency of each piece of glass.