Expanded Cinema as “Universe-in-a-Box”; The Book of Luna and the Neo-Baroque Poetics of Space Lauren Fenton, Clea T. Waite Media Arts and Practice Ph.D. program, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, 930 W. 34th st., Los Angeles Ca, 90089 lfenton@usc.edu, clea.waite@usc.edu Abstract. Metabook.1: The Book of Luna investigates a neo-Baroque poetics of space through an interactive, expanded cinema experience that takes the form of a reactive “personal theater” reminiscent of 17 th century cabinets of curiosity. The Book of Luna narrates a poetic essay about the Moon’s place in the historical imagination that unfolds across a series of nested spaces, namely a box with multiple compartments that contain miniature projections on curved surfaces, Pepper’s Ghost illusory visual effects, and interactive, electro-mechanical devices. The Book of Luna treats the Moon as a poetic concept and as a concrete, navigable place, effectively presenting a topological metaphor that superimposes a fictional with a topological space. Through its exploratory poetics and personal architecture, The Book of Luna draws a contemporary connection between the cabinet of curiosity and Gilles Deleuze’s analysis of the Baroque as the folding of the imaginary. In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard traces a profound homology between our perception of space, our way of being-at-space, and poetic thought: “the great function of poetry is to give us back the situations of our dreams. The house, the bedroom, the garret in which we were alone, furnished the framework for an interminable dream, one that poetry alone, through the creation of a poetic work, could succeed in achieving completely”[1]. Spaces are psychological resonating chambers, exterior sanctuaries for our interior states, in much the same way that poetry is a sensate linguistic structure for expressing daydreams. To apprehend space as poetic text entails following the a-logic of the daydream – accompanying the peregrinations of a mobile mind as it pulls in many signifying threads, pictures and words. MetaBook.1: The Book of Luna investigates this poetics of space by creating a polymedia experience with dynamic content through a reactive “personal theater”. This theater combines the experiential qualities of text, interactive devices, and cinema. The Book of Luna narrates a poetic essay about the Moon’s place in the historical imagination, unfolding across a series of nested spaces. The piece takes the form of a box with multiple compartments containing miniature projections on curved surfaces, Pepper’s Ghost illusory visual effects, and interactive electro-mechanical devices. In the spirit of Bachelard’s daydreams, The Book of Luna treats the Moon as a poetic concept and as a concrete, navigable place, effectively presenting a topological metaphor that superimposes a fictional with a selenographical space. The