The Time Machines are precise reconstructions of mechanical devices from the history of cinematic visual effects. Through a meticulous process of archival research and digital modeling, I recreate illusion-generating devices such as Max Fleischer’s setback camera, Fritz Lang’s Schüfftan setup, and Stanley Kubrick’s slit-scan apparatus as cut-paper constructions.

Each of these cinematic machines made visible the previously unimaginable: inter-dimensional travel, time dilation and contraction, and extra-dimensional space. By recreating these complex and often improvised devices in exacting detail, I imagine that we can return to pivotal moments in history when our collective relationship to reality changed—when time became a traversable dimension, and the future became a place.