Our books are in four different places in a small apartment. Some are on shelves, most are in a closet, and we have never seen all of them at once.
So I built the room we don't have. Every book we own on one wall. It was a birthday present for my partner.
A 3D library in the browser with all 480 of our books on the shelves. Every cover, proportion and spine colour is the real one. You can reorder them by colour, by year, or at random, and after dark the room changes and constellations appear between books that share a theme.
There is a door in the wall that is easy to miss. Behind it is a painted Hall of Doors, and past that, eight realms. Each one has a keeper, a riddle and a soundscape.
A ledger of sigils tracks where you have been, and there is an ending meant for the two of us. What happens inside the realms is not written down here.
I photographed our shelves and turned the photos into a catalogue.
I art directed the image models for the realm paintings, which are inspired by the AI artist KEKE. Nothing was accepted as it came back. The rest was dozens of small rounds on the pitch of a water drop, the opacity of a label, how long a whispered line stays before it fades.
He found the door and played it through to the ending in one sitting.
