What is a "perspective box" in the memoir, Firebird?

In his prologue (which he calls a prelude), the author refers to a particular type of art called perspective boxes, in which an artist creates a detailed model of a building with rooms (like a home) and paints it so that it looks both realistic and three dimensional when viewed through a particular type of lens. Throughout the book, he uses language and imagery associated with this particular type of artwork as a metaphor for the process of memory, and of coming to understand the past.