A whole new world has opened up at Steampunk HQ in Oamaru.
Yesterday was the official opening of the Infinity Portal, a futuristic high-tech mirror and lighting installation that contrasts with, but complements, the eclectic collection of recycled industrial art and sculptures already within the Steampunk HQ museum.
A collaboration between Steampunk HQ and Auckland spatial architect Angus Muir, the permanent lighting display has been designed as a gateway to other dimensions - real and imagined.
The walls, ceiling and floor are all mirrored and a lattice of hundreds of multicoloured LED pixel lights suspended from the ceiling plays light sequences that move and ripple through the space.
Steampunk HQ spokeswoman Jan Kennedy said there was much more to the Infinity Portal than just a ''grand selfie opportunity''.
The display was something that could only be experienced: ''It's impossible to explain.''
''A lot of people look at it differently - some see themselves into infinity, as far as their reflections are concerned.Others see it from a more cosmic view, the space travel side of it,'' she said.
''Most people just go in and go `Wow. What's this?'. I honestly don't know if there's anything else like this in New Zealand.''
Lighting designer Mr Muir was responsible for the lighting projection on the Whitestone Civic Trust building for Oamaru on Fire, as well as the installation of orbs in Emulsion Lane, and started working with Steampunk HQ in May.
Jack Grenfell and Don Paterson have also been instrumental in the Infinity Portal's design.
''What we've got is something totally unique, because it's been created from scratch, by a group of people who had no preconceived idea of what it was going to be like when they sat down and started talking about it,'' she said.
It met a new market for Steampunk HQ, but was still in keeping with what the group was trying to achieve.
''We don't want to be limited by our imaginations,'' Mrs Kennedy said.
Steampunk HQ is a museum in Oamaru's Victorian Precinct, made up of two large darkened rooms full of various contraptions and bizarre machinery and a basement, all with a theme of a ''dark post-apocalyptic vision of a future - as it might have been''.
A back door leads to a large yard with projects and machines in various stages of being ''steampunked''.
