THE WORK
Book One – Chapter One – Verse One
VOID
POINT
A thought experiment: imagine an infinitesimally small space, smaller than the smallest particle with nowhere else to go but out. Double this nothingness and it’s still a nothingness but double it an infinite number of times and you might have an infinitesimally small ‘somethingness’? The difference between an infinitely small amount of nothingness and this ‘somethingness’ is the attribute of location. From being a zero-dimensional nowhere it has become a zero-dimensional somewhere. This progression is the subject of ‘0 Book 1’ – dimension 0.
‘1 Book 2’ take this intangibly small something and continues the doubling. From one point to two points, to four, exponentially incrementing until there’s a infinitude of dimensionless points squeezed into an infinitesimally small location. A dimensionless point in dimension 1. With nowhere else to go but to expand into a line or vector of no length.
Books ‘2 to 3’ (dimension 2) & ‘3 to 4’ (dimension 3) expand on this theme, the vector of no length is infinitely incremented until it becomes a plane of no width and then in turn, it becomes a boundless plane of no height, with nowhere else to go but up. Finally ‘4 Book 5’ completes the experiment with the materialization of our imagined infinitesimally small space in dimension 4. It ends with our exploding particle of nothingness with nowhere else to go but to extend the moment into duration (dimension 5).
Yet, and this is the conundrum, the very thought of this dimensionless virtual particle is infinitely more substantial than the actuality being conceptualised. As a fleeting thought it exists in the first dimension of time and if doubled an infinite number of times would become the nascent centre of its own limitless – if imaginary – universe. Matter spews out, undergoes chemical bonding, becomes organic, self-conscious and finally imagines and performs this experiment.
In attempting to visualise the evolving geometry of dimensional increase I’ve been forced to adopt representational conventions. These derive from and are perhaps intrinsic to the obvious restriction of working on a flat two-dimensional surface. A constraint further compounded by the impossibility of portraying a length of no thickness let alone a point of zero dimensions.
Imagine a line, divide it in two, divide it again into four and then think of this as your x axis, Repeat again for the y axis and you should now how a grid that divides a square into sixteen equal portions.
If the two axes are scaled from 0 to 4 it is then possible to identify 25 points of intersection with values ranging from 00 to 44, where the first and second digits correspond to positions along the x and y axes respectively.
These are strictly speaking non-dimensional co-ordinates but in the spirit of this work let’s assume they possess the attributes of existance in three-dimensional space – my first convention.
So, to navigate around this work, let’s consider each of these co-ordinates as being represented by a drawing or, to use the venacular of this work, verses. In following this metaphor a sequence of five verses along one axis would be a “chapter” and the grid as a whole, a “book”:
…. and since the work as a whole concerns the emergence of a dimensionless point in three-dimensions, let’s reveal the work in full, all 125 verses – 5 per chapter, 5 chapters per book, 5 books in all – through co-ordinates 000 to 444, each verse defined according to its position with respect to the x, y and z axes. An unimaginable location finally endowed with the attributes of spatial presence, the map if not the territory.
Book One – Chapter One – Verse One
To navigate around this work I provide the three options above (later doubled for the backward and forward movement). Move systematically from one verse to the next or skip backwards and forwards a chapter or book at a time.
There is no right or wrong way of viewing this work. In the final analysis it’s only a pretence, a creative imagining of the truth, conceived in the throws of artistic license. Think of it as an imaginary map for an imaginary journey, not the territory itself.