In 1985 Nancy Holt investigated sculpture commissions for corporate buildings and in 1987 developed a proposal in collaboration with Alice Aycock (b. 1946) for the NYNEX Corporation, a telecommunications company serving New York and New England, at its site in Westchester County, New York.

Holt and Aycock's proposal for NYNEX integrated sculpture, architecture, and communications technology. Designed for the building's atrium and surrounding spaces, the artwork incorporated sculptural forms drawn from the history of communication, including a desk resembling a headset and seating inspired by switchboard buttons. An electronic system would animate neon arrows in an outdoor sculptural element and illuminate a globe-shaped board representing international communications. Visitors would be able to operate a small switchboard in the center of the atrium, lighting different sections of the globe to explore communications systems around the world.

One drawing, titled Star Catcher and dated October 1987, shows a spiraling structure of steel piping and rings, some containing lights or lenses designed to rotate. An accompanying elevation maps the constellations Draco and Phoenix through an arrangement of circular elements. In 1991 Holt developed a proposal for George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, initially titled Solar Cone and later renamed Star Catcher. Both projects remain unrealized.