Portal: Design and Fabrication of Incidence-Driven Screens

We introduce "Portal", an optically-illusive screen panel with a grid of mirrors serving as its pixels. The RGB values of each mirror are obtained from its environment using the law of reflection. Specifically, we employ two images: one target image for the mirror panel, and another which serves as a palette to lend mirrors its RGB values. Our methodology uniquely orients each mirror in the grid to reflect a particular region of the palette image to a specified viewpoint. The holistic image from the mirror grid composes the target image. Within the process, we need to satisfy a set of rules to secure the maximum approximation of the result with the intended images. We also propose a methodology to fabricate Portal using laser cuttings. As a proof of concept, we created a Portal equipped with 540 mirrors. Based on the physical and digital simulation results, we speculate possible applications of Portal in a range of disciplines, including computer graphics, art, and architecture.