Chris Fraser creates dazzling light installations by turning a dark enclosed room into variation on a camera obscura. A precursor to the camera, the camera obscura is “a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with color and perspective preserved.”

Fraser on his project:

My light installations use the ‘camera obscura’ as a point of departure. They are immersive optical environments, idealized spaces with discreet openings. In translating the outside world into moving fields of light and color, the projections make an argument for unfixed notion of sight.

Design Interactions Research asks the question:

What happens when you decouple design from the marketplace, when rather than making technology sexy, easy to use and more consumable, designers use the language of design to pose questions, inspire, and provoke — to transport our imaginations into parallel but possible worlds? Our research explores new ways design can make technology more meaningful and relevant to our lives, both now, and in the future, by thinking not only about new applications but implications as well.

One possible answer to this question they’ve explored is the 5th Dimensional Camera. What makes this camera different than any currently available cameras?

The 5th Dimensional Camera is a fictional device that captures glimpses of parallel universes suggested by quantum physics. How might we seek to interact with these other worlds? Would we become jealous of our parallel selves? What would happen to our sense of morality if we knew that we had committed inconceivable acts in another world?

Considering the progress being made in building quantum computers, the 5th Dimensional Camera might not remain purely fictional for much longer.