Wooden Nickels
Stochasticon LXVI
“Wooden Nickels” 2003
W-9” H-17” D-12” sphere diameter 8” coins diameter 1.5”
144 wood coins
If an image is worth 1000 words, a great symbol such as images on a coin should be worth 1000 pages. I symbolized many episodes of my life, fears, longings, hopes, joys and despairs, as designs on both sides of wooden coins. As we churn the wooden coins in this device resembling a food processor, the symbolic images only appear to yield a cacophony of seemingly meaningful images as if the symbolism of a given coin, by virtue of its juxtaposition, imposition or superposition to another coin is nullified.
But meaning, like beauty,is also is in the eye of the beholder, and in Wooden Nickels meaning comes in like a Vegas jackpot!
When I came up with the idea of this machine, I felt strongly that this slot machine of symbols would someday magically bring on an epiphany about my "Inner being, in a haphazard juxtaposition of signs. Unfortunately it has not,or at least not yet. That is why I titled it "Wooden Nickels."
The same river twice
This device shows two wheels, each with a radiating lay-out of groups of half-alexandrine verses. One wheel has more halves than the other, when the wells rotate, their "phasing," creates random horizontal alignments of alexandrine verses or Iambic Hexameters, that seem to never repeat twice, evocating the quote:
"You can never step into the same river twice.
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The same river twice
The same river twice
Wooden Nickels
The same river twice