INSTALLATION
My favorite measuring instrument is the sextant (this hasn’t always been the case). I love the interplay of its parts: the sight tube, the horizon mirror, the index mirror mounted to rotate on the alidade, the light filters that fold in and out, the degree scale. The best part is the sight window: it is halved by the first mirror, then further quartered by the horizon, and in the middle appears either the half sun or the North Star.
For my installation ARTIFICIAL HORIZON, I made the sextant walk-in. The individual technical components are transformed into furniture and sculptures, the horizon hangs rotated by 90 degrees from the ceiling. Through the shift in scale and the rotation of the horizon, the installation renders the instrument’s function tangible while at the same time raising questions of orientation and the determination of one’s position in space.
Design in Gesellschaft (Feb 2025)
/ bureau fomo (Oct 2025)
Assistance: Benedikt Rau
supported by: bmkoes
Photos: Johanna Pichlbauer
Artificial Horizon
My favorite measuring instrument is the sextant (this hasn’t always been the case). I love the interplay of its parts: the sight tube, the horizon mirror, the index mirror mounted to rotate on the alidade, the light filters that fold in and out, the degree scale. The best part is the sight window: it is halved by the first mirror, then further quartered by the horizon, and in the middle appears either the half sun or the North Star.
For my installation ARTIFICIAL HORIZON, I made the sextant walk-in. The individual technical components are transformed into furniture and sculptures, the horizon hangs rotated by 90 degrees from the ceiling. Through the shift in scale and the rotation of the horizon, the installation renders the instrument’s function tangible while at the same time raising questions of orientation and the determination of one’s position in space.
Design in Gesellschaft (Feb 2025)
/ bureau fomo (Oct 2025)
Assistance: Benedikt Rau
supported by: bmkoes
Photos: Johanna Pichlbauer
Himmelsscheibe von Nebra – Biskuit
This object is not a sextant, but an Artificial Horizon by Davis Instruments, “which answers the need of every sextant user who cannot depend on a natural sea horizon”.