Cracking the elaborate code

To get to the Panoptic Studio at Carnegie Mellon University, you take an elevator down four flights to a dingy sub-basement. Inside room B510, a series of metal cross beams enclose a massive, otherworldly structure: a geodesic dome. Each of the wooden dome’s hexagonal panels is covered with a tangle of wires, cameras, and connectors, and a steady thrum emanates from the rows of computers that surround the hulking structure. At the bottom of the dome, a single panel is missing and bright li