A Cube's Creation

Before you lies a small varnished wooden box, if it could tell you a story, what would it say? Would it talk about its creation? Its initial launch into the world? Its travels across land and water? Its passing of hands and conversation?



Cube #56 was created in the sculpture foundry at Cornell University in Ithaca NY, USA. Made more or less identical to its brothers (#55 and #57), its original form was a half-inch sheet of plywood bought at the local LOWES Home Improvements store in downtown Ithaca. Guide marks were drawn every two and a-half inches and the plywood was carried to the table saw. The transformation began: From a single sheet, to multiple strips, cross cut into two and a half by two inch rectangles, then nailed together and sanded. 


What was once material at a department store, now had shape: The cube. In the sculpture world, this shape is significant as it is realized to be the basis or beginning point to all three-dimensional creation. For example rendering software’s automatically provide a cube as a starting point with center at 0,0,0 on the x,y,z axis. The logic here is that any three-dimensional form can be generated from the cube.


Now, sanded smooth, edges piercing, cube #56 receives its identity. On one side “#56” written is across the top; directly below it in red letters is “Take Me With You!”. On the opposite side is a QR Code, readable by Smartphones, and its pointing URL written below it. Two cotes of indestructible weatherproof marine resin later and Cube #56 sits, on a sheet of clear cellophane, drying, resting, waiting to be set free into the world. 


The next day into a backpack it goes, along with its sisters Cube #54 and #58, to be taken to a location of travel and high pedestrian traffic; to begin an unknown journey a to a final resting place; to be free like the seedlings of a dandelion in the breeze.