Aztec Dreams

This work began a long time ago as a dream and a psychedelic vision: A sun stone made not of carved rock, but of circuitry. Like a control panel for a space ship of a long forgotten, advanced society of spacefarers. It is like an Aztec calendar crossed with a motherboard, glowing softly as if it were still running some ancient program. Aztec Dreams is my attempt to pull that image out of the dream-space and give it physical form.

Each of the three hexagons is a fragment of that imagined artefact. The pattern is radially symmetric like a ritual sun disk, but its “glyphs” are sharpened into something closer to circuit traces, city maps and pixelated temple facades. Seen together in a triangular constellation, the hexagons feel less like separate objects and more like a small network: three identical nodes repeating the same motif, as if they were humming the same forgotten command under their breath.

The materials keep everything grounded and physical. A dark, mahogany-stained layer of birch hovers over a bright white backing, bolted together so that the construction is completely visible. Hundreds of LEDs are hidden between these layers; in daylight the work is pure wood and geometry, but in the dark the light seeps out in shifting colours, somewhere between neon signs and embers of a fire. It's like a relic that has been switched on again after a long silence.

Aztec Dreams is one of my earliest pieces, rebuilt and refined years later. Returning to it felt like personal archaeology: digging up an old shard from the subconscious, cleaning it, and setting it in a clearer structure. The result sits in the tension between ancient calendar and digital interface, between sacred object and user interface. It is a small, glowing question about what kinds of systems we choose to navigate today.