Miami Dice: After Mallarmé 
silkscreen print on acrylic cube
12.5 x 12.5 x 12.5cm 
2003 

Wittgenstein's Dilemma, Inverted
silkscreen on acrylic
12.7 x 12.7 x 12.7 cm
1999

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The series of cubes exhibited here began with a cage of wire made for The Globe Theatre's production of The Winter's Tale. A cage of wire words followed to exemplify Wittgenstein's proposition The Limits of My Language are the Limits of My World. Printing this on an acrylic cube where the inside can be seen and, by an oddity of optics, experienced from the outside seemed to unite the reading of a statement with its perception as a metaphor. Reversing the text on the outside in a later version emphasised the trap of language that Wittgenstein describes.

Mallarmé in Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard, the first line of the foundation poem of chance procedures (and concrete poetry in general), outlines another dilemma which I translate as A throw of dice will never do away with chance. Each dot on these giant dice incorporates the line and through the mysteries arising from the solid geometry of a transparent cube each 'throw' gives rise to new configurations as chance plays its second role.

Looked at from the sides, from the corners and from above, the cube's symmetry produces illusions and paradoxes of perception, hints of mirrors and fractures appropriate to each of these statements.

See also Wittgenstein's Trap in the Sculpture section.