Creating it was a little more complicated. Liittschwager built a small mobile photo studio that was sturdy enough to travel from New York City's Central Park to the shrubland of South Africa's Mountain Fynbos, from Costa Rica's cloud forest to the Polynesian coral reef and beyond. Here, the cube in Central Park.

W. S. Di Piero describes the scene:

"David Liittschwager straddled his green cubic-foot frame over a decaying deadfall log in the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, a three-acre fenced-off area at the southern edge of New York’s Central Park. The cube housed millipedes (some coiled so tightly in defensive postures that they’re impossible to pick up), beetles, seeds, spiders, weevils, midges, leaves, and springtails (insects .04 to 0.2 inch long that catapult themselves over enormous distances).

Season and time of day determined what Liittschwager found. It’s 'a week’s worth of what’s there,' he says. Because his team worked at the end of a dry October, they found no earthworms. Absences told a story, too. When one day they found their cube askew, they knew only a raccoon was large enough to do that, and at night they found virtually no flying insects because the city lights that attract them also kill them."