What better way to imagine the universe in all its dazzling complexity than this 3.3-metre-high singing and flashing sculpture? Cosmoscope depicts the universe from the atomic scale to the cosmic, via the complexity of human-scale biology. It is a homage to cosmological models of the past, especially Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, drawn around 1490.

Cosmoscope is an enormous puzzle in engineering, sound and design. To build it, artist Simeon Nelson assembled a team including scientists, engineers, a composer, a psychologist and a software architect. Bringing the team together is a shared fascination with humankind’s place in the cosmos – an accident of evolution bearing brains that are the most complicated objects in the universe.

See the sculpture in action and find out how it was made in our exclusive video.

The universe in light Robert Godman

• Cosmoscope will be at the London Lumiere festival this weekend