The atrium in the Dallas Hilton Anatole hotel is Texas-big, lofting more than 150 feet in the air. Owner Harlan Crow — legendary real estate investor and eccentric collector of ego-size dead-dictator statues – needed to fill it.

What happened next was perhaps the most ambitious kinetic sculpture ever commissioned, the Nebula.

Conceived and designed by Berkeley, California, artist Reuben Margolin, and built and installed by Mark Sabatino’s Gizmo Art Production in San Francisco, the sculpture seems to swim, as a motor on the ceiling rotates a massive truss holding 445 stainless steel cables connected to 15,000 reflectors, shimmering like jewels.