This sculptural piece, entitled <Dice>, consists of three cubes, each with six text-based images painted on the Plexiglas surfaces.  Each image plane features a different set of numbers with a corresponding geometrical shape. By arranging the images into a cube, I attempt to explore the relationship between language and space.  The artwork addresses the ways through which text is used to construct and activate space.  Further, it also investigates ways by which space can activate and alter expression or interpretation of language.  This task is accomplished by examining the division of space -- inside versus outside -- via the text.

The idea of division of space can be extended to the concept of cultural semiotics with reference to the Tartu School model of semiotics (November 2, 2003).  According to this model, the inside is considered as cultural or textual while the outside is labelled as natural or non-textual.  This theory assumes that people of the same group are insiders and everybody else is outsider.  The insiders, being textual, live an ordered and meaningful life, whereas the environment outside the space defined by the cube is non-textual, symbolizing chaotic and disorder. The three cubes, both independently and as a whole, portray this idea of cultural semiotics.  Considering the space within the system as positive, while the surrounding environment is negative, the image planes of each word block address this issue by situating the viewers as outsiders, who presumably are incapable of understanding the insiders' (textual) world, the positive space, through the negative space.  Functioning as a whole, the cubes illustrate another aspect of this issue.  Every individual in our society belongs to more than one different community, such as school, work, friends and family.  Often, these sectors do not cross one another.  Thus, by pictorially representing phone numbers of people, met from different places, work, school and others, on different cubes, this project also reflects on the organization of our society.

This untitled e-mail art piece is a screen shot of the familiar hotmail inbox with texts that is designed to be read up-side-down.  The artwork's meaning unfolds from the viewers' participation to decode the message and its content.