Leandro Erlich · Liberty Science Center, Jersey City, New Jersey · 2023
Xippas and Liberty Science Center identify a horizontal architectural model and a large angled mirror. Visitors activate the illusion by lying and posing on the façade. The local architectural vocabulary includes a brick apartment façade, deli and fire escapes. The museum places it in its first-floor entrance hall. The Xippas article occasionally calls the location New York; this reconstruction uses the museum’s actual Jersey City location.
Official museum photographs and sampled views of Xippas’s embedded film show three residential rows of four windows above the storefront, terracotta-coloured mouldings, arched details, cornices, dark metal balconies and diagonal escape ladders. The mirror also reflects patterned hall flooring. The surrounding images reveal structural columns and a ribbed overhead structure.
| Element | Implementation and limitations |
|---|---|
| Façade | Estimated 9.6 × 14 m, raised 0.22 m. These are model dimensions, not published measurements. Window and store proportions follow photographs. |
| Mirror | Estimated 45° plane, 10.6 m wide with 15.8 m rise and run. This angle gives the observed horizontal-to-vertical transformation; no surveyed mirror angle was found. |
| Hall | Approximate 30 × 44 m setting. Bay positions, upper circulation, glazing, seating and service fronts are interpretive, not a complete museum reconstruction. |
| Access | Visitors can walk around the sides and onto the flat model, then return. The low end of the mirror, support posts, raised balcony rails and structural columns block navigation. There is no fictional apartment interior, stair climb or access behind the mirror’s low edge. |
| Avatar | A blue-clad figure follows the camera position. Reaching and star poses lie flat on the model and appear upright in the mirror; standing shows how the illusion changes. The camera remains at eye level for comfortable navigation. P or the pose button cycles poses. Off the façade, the avatar stands. |
All visible architecture, materials, lettering, avatar and thumbnail are generated locally. No source photographs, film frames or audio are redistributed. The live planar mirror renders the scene from a reflected camera and clips geometry behind the physical mirror plane; it is not a prerecorded video. The avatar is deliberately stylized. Dimensions, clearances, lighting and hall layout remain estimates. Source credits belong to their publishers; this is an independent interpretation, not an official museum reproduction.