World Wide Würfel
“World Wide Würfel (WWW)” 2023. made in Hamburg, Germany at @mom_art_space during @videokaffe residency and exhibition Seemannsgarn. “WWW” is a new iteration of my Würfel / Display Unit sculpture first conceived in 1999 and later remade in 2010.
When i first made the work in 1999 i imagined the pyramid/ tower/ column in part as a way to represent my experiences of this new technology called the internet that i was first experiencing as a graduate student in Carbondale. The cube I imagined as a node of the internet and unfolded the connections we make. I also hoped then to make many more of them.
The first cube was made in Skelmanthorpe, in the United Kingdom. It was mailed to Carbondale but never arrived. A lost ship. This exhibition was about journeys we make as artists and the challenges we face. So it seemed appropriate to combine the maps, the cube and the moment.
When folded as a cube the outer module elements rest on the tip of the pyramid. These outer elements each have map segments representing the different Videokaffe members home locations, in the USA, in Finland and our moment of coming together in Hamburg, Germany.
WWW is the physical manifestation of the motif found in my ongoing series - "A Cube is a Rectangle / Ein Würfel ist ein Rechteck"
Folding, unfolding, hiding, revealing. These actions and gestures are all entwined in this project. For me these actions represent possibility and complexity, in relationships and knowledge, sharing and hoarding, ideas published and thoughts unresolved.
The towers are pragmatic - they imply stackability, that a multitude of cube might stack upwards. The towers are also poetic and the difference between them, the pyramid and the cube produce the modules which are at once practical and quixotic.
More to come...