P-159 R Cubic Limit I

Basic Information

Title: P-159 R Cubic Limit I
Artist(s): Manfred Mohr
Date Created: 1974
Framed Dimensions: 21.75 x 21.75 in.
Unframed Dimensions: 20 x 20 in.
Medium: Plotter drawing on paper
Inventory ID: Mohr-1979-02

Description

signed lower right

“New York Nov. 5 1983 AE=O” written on the back of the frame

This algorithm uses the 12 edges of the cube as an alphabet. The number of lines slowly decreases towards the sides of the outside square in a statistical procedure, while the cube slowly rotates.

In Cubic Limit, Mohr introduces the cube into his work as a fixed system with which signs are generated. In the first part of this work phase (1972–75), an alphabet of signs is created from the twelve lines of a cube. In some works, statistics and rotation are used in the algorithm to generate signs. In others, combinatorial, logical and additive operators generate the global and local structures of the images.
In the second part of this work phase (1975–77), cubes are divided into two parts by one of the Cartesian planes. For each image the two partitions contain independent rotations of a cube. They are projected into two dimensions and clipped by a square window (the projection of a cube at 0.0.0 degrees). By rotating both parts of these cubes in small but different increments, long sequences of images are developed.