An Infinity Box built by Los Angeles-based artist Matt Elson isn’t complete until people duck inside. Once they cross the threshold, the interior transforms into an immersive kaleidoscope flecked with candles, colored lights, and paper flowers. Whether the viewers laugh at their own reflections or gawk in wonder, the walls respond with endless variations of their shifting expressions—and if one person decides to stay inside while his or her viewing partner leaves, another spectator will pop in and transform the exhibition into something totally new.

Sticking your head into a cramped, dimly-lit box probably seems like it would be an isolating experience, but Elson, 59, insists his work is all about fostering human connection. Most pieces are built to fit two to four people’s heads at a time, and once they pop their heads inside, they embark on a shared journey through the artist’s psychedelic landscapes. “It’s really about being present with another person,” Elson tells mental_floss. “And it’s about being in the moment right here, right now, not distracted with anything else.”

Elson has come a long way since his first try at an Infinity Box, which he built as an art student at the Pratt Institute. The foamcore sculpture had eye-holes for viewing two fields of mirrors at once. It was designed in such a way that it was impossible for the viewer’s eyes to rest on a single focal point. “There were several different experiments going on at the same time,” Elson says. “[It caused] massive confusion for the brain with a sort of seasick feeling afterward.”

After he graduated from Pratt in 1982, Elson transitioned from physical art to computer graphics, receiving a Masters of Computer Applications at the New York Institute of Technology in 1987. Three years later, when he relocated to Los Angeles for his career, he left the experimental box from his art school days behind.

Elson spent the next two decades working for some of the entertainment industry’s biggest companies. He was at DreamWorks during the studio’s launch and assisted in Disney’s transition from 2D to 3D animation. But even after all his successes, the artist felt out of his element in front of a monitor. “I was tired of making things in small dark rooms by myself,” he says. So he went back to making fine art paintings like he’d learned to do as an undergraduate student.

And then a trip to Burning Man made him reconsider mirrors as a medium.

Every year, tens of thousands of people participating in Burning Man build a temporary community in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert and hold a week-long festival of art, electronic music, and “radical self-expression,” all leading up to the symbolic burning of a towering, wooden effigy of their namesake mascot. Elson attended in 2010, and while wandering through the desert displays, he came across a piece created by artist Manu Kaleido. KaleidoAct used moving lights, shadows, and puppetry reflected in a large mirrored space to alter the viewer’s sense of reality.

Inspired, Elson went home and started playing with the materials on a much smaller scale. One of the first things he did was hold two mirrors back-to-back and bring them up to his face. “That bifurcates the field of view,” he explains. “You get all this anomalous information that’s in conflict and your brain’s trying to make sense of it.”

Using that concept as a starting point, Elson began construction on a full-sized box in April of 2012. Unlike creating something in a computer program, putting a box together required a true physical connection to his work. His decades of tech experience did come in handy, however. Since building his first box as a student, he’d learned geometry concepts from animating computer graphics that made planning out 3D structures a lot easier. He used that knowledge to design pieces that were as coherent and seamless in their final forms as they were when he envisioned them.

He was so eager to show off the first box in the Infinity Box series—appropriately titled Infinity Box No. 1—that he put together a quick version made from plywood and Gatorfoam within a month to display at a Thai massage parlor in Santa Monica. He finished an updated model of Infinity Box No. 1 made from wood and masonite a year later.

Elson has built 14 boxes in the years since, and that’s not including the replicas of his original designs. They’ve been showcased at Burning Man, the Science Museum in London, and most recently at the Hall of Magic in Brooklyn during an exhibit promoting the Syfy series The Magicians. According to Elson, more than 220,000 people have experienced his creations at his shows alone, and he has noticed similar patterns from the people who view them.

“What I really love is when I see people … put their heads in a box and they’re there for 10 or 15 minutes just having a conversation,” Elson says. “The average length of time a person spends in front of a painting or a sculpture in a museum is on the border of a few seconds. They’re very short experiences, [but] people tend to really take their time with these [boxes].”

Different boxes evoke different themes. His sixth box, Radiance, is based on the story from the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu scripture in which Krishna reveals his universal form to Arjuna. “Arjuna saw the Universal Form of the Lord with many mouths and eyes, and many visions of marvel, with numerous divine ornaments, and holding divine weapons,” the passage reads. “Arjuna saw the entire universe, divided in many ways, but standing as (all in) One (and One in all) in the body of Krishna.”

The spirit of this story is what Elson aimed to capture in the box, which is a consistent crowd-pleaser. Viewers are treated to one of two perspectives, depending on which side they enter: One side, representing order, is covered with flowers and electric candles; the other side, representing chaos, is shot through with swirling rainbow lights. The mirrors are positioned in a way that slices the occupant’s face into 11 separate reflections.

“It takes a beautiful picture, and I think that’s one of the things people like about it,” Elson says. “But for me, it’s a deeper metaphorical layer of looking at the person and seeing the many aspects of them.”

After working on his Infinity Boxes for five years, Elson is now planning to turn them into something even more engrossing. For his next project, he’s fully embracing the carnival funhouse concept and building pieces out of full-sized shipping containers. Participants will be able to walk inside the boxes and see reflections of their whole bodies scattered across the walls.

By completely enveloping the senses, Elson hopes the boxes will compel viewers to slow down and live in the present. “That’s the real goal,” he says. “Creating a space for people to be aware of their lives.”

It’s everything a movie producer could ever ask for: Thieves rappelling down from a skylight to avoid motion detectors; a criminal mastermind known only as “The Astronomer”; Scotland Yard. All of them embroiled in a successful—at least, so far—heist of more than 160 rare books valued at over $2.5 million.

The Guardian reports that a team of highly organized criminals broke into a London warehouse in late January to swipe rare titles, owned by multiple parties, that were being held in storage en route to a California book fair. The heist was facilitated by the crooks drilling holes into a skylight, then using ropes to inch down to prevent alarms from going off. Works from the 15th and 16th centuries have been reported missing, including volumes written by Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Galileo.

Closed-circuit cameras captured the thieves making deliberate searches of boxes known to contain the valuable items, meaning they were well-prepared for what they might find. Because the books are so distinctive, it would be virtually impossible to sell them without raising suspicion; authorities suspect an ethically-challenged collector known as “The Astronomer” may be behind the score.

If true, it wouldn’t be the first time a love of books led to a brazen robbery. In 1990, an Iowa man named Stephen Blumberg was caught after he had spent two decades amassing nearly 19,000 books from libraries and museums. The collection was valued at $5.3 million. Blumberg served four and a half years in prison.

[h/t Smithsonian]

James Bond is one of the most coveted roles an actor can ever hope to land, and it’s been that way for decades. Six different men have played the role in a series of 24 films produced over nearly six decades, which means many, many more actors either tried to get the part and failed, or got the part but didn’t want it. Here are just a few Bond candidates you might not have seen coming.

1. CARY GRANT

At first brush, Cary Grant seems like a natural choice for Bond, and he had both Bond creator Ian Fleming’s favor and a close friendship with producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli on his side. Grant was already in his late 50s by the time Dr. No began its journey to the screen, though, and would only commit to a single film. Hoping for a star who would sign a three-picture deal, the production moved on.

2. REX HARRISON

Best known for films like My Fair Lady and Doctor Dolittle, Harrison might not exactly be super-spy material, but he was among the many actors considered when Eon Productions began casting Dr. No. In the end, despite his debonair side, it was decided Harrison didn’t have the action chops for the role.

3. DAVID NIVEN

David Niven certainly had Bond’s charming, tuxedo-clad side down, and was a favorite casting choice of Ian Fleming. The role ultimately went to Sean Connery, but Niven did get a revenge of sorts, playing a retired version of Bond in the 1967 spoof Casino Royale, loosely based on Fleming’s novel.

4. RICHARD BURTON

Another favorite of Fleming’s, Richard Burton was just beginning his legendary film career when he was approached about the role. Disagreements over salary and his belief that the Bond concept might not have stood up on film got in the way, though, and he ultimately passed.

5. PATRICK MCGOOHAN

When casting on Dr. No began, Patrick McGoohan—perhaps best known today for the TV series The Prisoner—was starring in the series Danger Man (Secret Agent in the U.S.), and was asked to consider the Bond role. But McGoohan, a devout Catholic, turned it down.

“It has an insidious and powerful influence on children,” McGoohan told the Express. “Would you like your son to grow up like James Bond? Since I hold these views strongly as an individual and parent I didn’t see how I could contribute to the very things to which I objected.”

6. DICK VAN DYKE

Yes, it sounds weird, but when Sean Connery departed the Bond role after making You Only Live Twice (he would later return for a massive salary to make Diamonds Are Forever), Dick Van Dyke was among the actors considered to replace him. According to Van Dyke, he was asked to consider the part by Broccoli, but when he reminded the producer of his famously bad English accent from Mary Poppins, Broccoli replied: “Oh, that’s right—forget it!”

7. PETER PURVES

In the mid-1960s, Peter Purves was a TV actor best known for his role as Steven Taylor on the then-relatively new sci-fi series Doctor Who, which he’d recently departed when he auditioned for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Needless to say he didn’t get the part, and was then dumped by his agent. His string of bad luck ended when he landed a presenter job on the long-running BBC children’s program Blue Peter in 1967, where he stayed for more than a decade.

8. TERENCE STAMP

Terence Stamp was one of the hottest young actors of the 1960s, so it was only natural the producers wanted him to consider playing Bond when Connery left after five films. When Stamp pitched his idea for how to introduce a new Bond to producer Harry Saltzman, though, it was quickly rejected.

“[Saltzman] took me out for dinner at the White Elephant in Curzon Street,” Stamp told the Evening Standard. “He said, ‘We’re looking for the new 007. You’re really fit and really English.’

“I was very shocked but I thought it was great. ‘The fact is,’ I said, ‘Sean has made the role his own. The public will have trouble accepting anyone else. But in one of the books it starts with him disguised as a Japanese warrior. If we could do that one, I could start the movie in complete Japanese make-up. By the time it came off they are used to me a little bit. I would love to do it like that.’ He wasn’t impressed.”

9. MICHAEL GAMBON

Michael Gambon, best known to modern audiences as Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter franchise, was one of many actors considered when producers were looking to cast Diamonds Are Forever (the film Connery eventually returned for). Gambon argued to Broccoli that he wasn’t nearly fit enough for the role.

“I said, I can’t play James Bond, because I’m bald, I’ve got a double chin and I’ve got girl’s t*ts,” Gambon recalled. “So he said, ‘Well, so has Sean Connery, so we put a wig on him, and we put two big leather bags full of ice on his chest before the take. And then a man comes in just before the action and takes the bags off and then Connery has a beautiful flat chest and he has false teeth and all that.’

“He said, ‘you could well do it.’ But he didn’t offer it to me!”

10. BURT REYNOLDS

No American has ever starred in the Bond series, but a few came close, and Burt Reynolds was one of them after George Lazenby departed the series following On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Though he was offered the part, Reynolds said no, believing an American could never play the spy.

“I think I could have done it well,” Reynolds later said. “In my stupidity, I said, ‘An American can’t play James Bond, it has to be an Englishman—Bond, James Bond. Nah, I can’t do it.’ Oops. Yeah, I could have done it.”

11. CLINT EASTWOOD

Clint Eastwood was yet another American star considered when Lazenby left the series. Then best known for his TV work and his Spaghetti westerns with director Sergio Leone, Eastwood just didn’t feel right taking the character over from another actor.

“I was offered pretty good money to do James Bond if I would take on the role,” Eastwood said. “But to me, well, that was somebody else’s gig. That’s Sean’s deal. It didn’t feel right for me to be doing it.”

12. JAMES BROLIN

When Roger Moore decided he was done with Bond after For Your Eyes Only in 1981, producers again went after an American actor. After a great screen test, James Brolin essentially got the part, but when Warner Bros. announced their own Bond film—the Connery-starring Never Say Never Again—to compete with the upcoming Octopussy in 1983, the producers got nervous, and convinced Moore to return.

13. SAM NEILL

When Moore finally retired from the Bond role for good, Sam Neill was a front-runner to replace him, alongside future Bonds Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton. Neill’s screen test impressed longtime Bond director John Glen, but Broccoli wasn’t so sure. With Brosnan forced back into another season of Remington Steele, the role ultimately went to Dalton.

14. LIAM NEESON

When the time came to revitalize the Bond franchise in the ‘90s, Liam Neeson was offered the role. He turned it down for a very simple reason: Love.

“My wife-to-be [the late actress Natasha Richardson] said, ‘If you play James Bond we’re not getting married.’ And I had to take that on board because I did want to marry her.”

15. EWAN MCGREGOR

When it came time to recast Bond following Pierce Brosnan’s tenure, dozens of actors were considered, and Ewan McGregor was among the serious contenders. In the end, he turned it down because he was afraid the job would take over his career.

“With Star Wars, we did a three-month shoot and a couple of weeks of pick-ups so it wasn’t an enormous involvement,” McGregor said. “But with Bond, I suppose it’s a much longer shoot and there’s a massive amount of publicity. I would worry about not being able to do any other work.”

Award-winning grass-covered pavilion in #India constructed with over 1,000 #recycled #pallets https://t.co/DNH8zTlzyG pic.twitter.com/2jK82vhM18

— inhabitat (@inhabitat) February 14, 2017

A few years ago, the architecture firm M:OFA Studios found a way to transform discarded shipping pallets into something beautiful. “Pensieve,” named after the magical memory basin from the Harry Potter series, featured more than 1200 wooden recyclables arranged to create a one-of-a-kind public space in New Delhi.

The 800-square-foot structure was erected as part of the India Design ID event in 2014 and taken down that same year. But according to inhabitat, the design was so memorable that it’s still being recognized for awards even though it’s no longer standing. Most recently, it was nominated for a 2016 Kohler Bold Design Award in the “Community Harmony” category.

The symmetrical pavilion was modeled after the ruins scattered throughout the city. The crates were stacked on top of one another—some were kept empty and others were filled with compost for growing grass and other plant life. According to M:OFA, the design was “based on the idea of unobstructed thoughts associated often with children.” The broken walls of New Dehli’s ruins are sometimes used as playgrounds by kids, and “Pensieve” was meant to evoke this same sense of playfulness. Once inside, visitors could lounge on the solar-powered furniture that lit up when occupied, or stroll among the 100 motion-activated fiber-optic light fixtures at night.

M:OFA will be bringing more of their innovative architecture to this year’s India Design ID. For their 2017 project, they’re creating “mega-structures” out of wood scraps that will resemble hills rising up from the earth.

[h/t inhabitat]