Millennial Time Machine: A Landau Carriage Converted to a Camera Obscura

Millennial Time Machine is a 19th century horse drawn landau, whose carriage has been converted into a camera obscura at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and is a public art fixture at the University.

The Landau carriage was converted into a camera obscura in 2003 by Rodney Graham, the most celebrated artists in the history of Canadian art.

The camera obscura, which produces an image that is upside down and reversed, was an influential precursor to the modern, multi-lens camera. During the late 1500s to 1800s, the camera obscura was used as a model for explaining human vision and it stood as a model, in both rational and empiricist thought, of how observation leads to truthful inferences about the world. It was widely used as an instrument of scientific inquiry, artistic practice, and popular entertainment

Unveiled on June 25, 2003, this sculpture is the first work of art to be commissioned for the campus of University of British Columbia since 1976.

Millennial Time Machine is housed at a concrete and glass structure designed by a Vancouver based architecture firm Fast+Epp at the south-west corner of Main Mall and Memorial Road on the campus of the University.

The camera obscura focuses on a young sequoia tree that will grow to maturity. The tree and location are also meant to raise ideas about the university as a place where knowledge, technologies, and histories are constructed, and how this information is passed to generations of students.

You can learn more about the Landau carriage pavilion at Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery of the University of British Columbia.