it "catalogues and compares 65,536 stones, each occupying its own square on a gargantuan checkerboard — the simplest binary device for implying order."
I went to see this with a friend and we had a conversation covering the nature of chance and the random in relation to chaos and the way that we tend to impose order and meaning on our experience. Alan is interested in science fiction as well and mentioned HP Lovecraft's universe where randomness is a keynote in a universe which is indifferent to our existence which gives rise to horror. This was far from horror though: ordered randomness. One of the interesting visual effects was the patches of shadow -was this a lighting effect of areas where the light from the spots was weaker or a kind of cumulative effect of an area of larger stones casting more shadow -or both? But again an illustration of the way that random can accumulate 'lumpiness' where things can accrete together rather than a randomly even distribution.
It was interesting to view the pebbles with a video in the background of men constructing what appeared to be a grid through which one could view the (North?) sea. This seemed resonant of the idea that the relative chaos of the see was being 'ordered' for the viewer into nine squares; contained and yet not contained; ordered yet not really. The nice thing about this, too, was that we see the construction. Of course, often, we don't realise the constructedness of the grids through which we view the world.
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