Cube

What is Fang (方in Chinese has the both meaning of cube and square) ? Which things are constituted by cube or square? Square and cube not only exist in ordinary objects, but also in mathematics, philosophy, art and religious. We find things constitute of square and cube and analyze the meaning of square and cube in them, and then discover more possibilities of the cube and square.

How do objects exist? What do we learn from the way of their existences? Maybe they depend on people’s perspectives in observation. In this chapter, we observe the white plastic cube from different angles and in many manners.

In the process of the cube project, we write down our feelings, thoughts, and conversations in time. Many ideas here may make you feel they have nothing with a cube, but more about words, identifying some concept, boundary, volume, and about our own limitations.

The cube is an observation on cube which involves exploring the practicality, meaning and other properties of cube.

The observation brings us a profound understanding of the relation between humans and the material world.

It is hard to find a word with the same meaning as “方/Fang” in Chinese. Comparing with a proper shape, “Fang” is more like an ambiguous feeling, a feeling of an object with four sides and four angles. “Fang” in Chinese has some meanings which are usually used. For example, “fang” has the meaning of place and region, party and shade, law and rule, etc.

Label is a slip of paper or other material, marked or inscribed, for attachment to something to indicate its manufacturer, nature, ownership, destination, etc.

Labelling or using a label is describing someone or something
in a word or short phrase. For objective and existing facts, labels facilitate people’s communication.

However, when the label is a description applied from the outside, rather than something intrinsic to the labelled thing, labeling something is to classify it in to a particular stereotype without nuances.

Fei:

My ideas and inspiration all come from "What it is about when it is about nothing?". This sentence comes from an exhibition title curated by Michael Lee in 2015, For me, this sentence It's like questioning my attention to objects, or even questioning myself.

What it is about when it is about nothing? In study on cube, I seem to be mechanically proving the existence of cube, the meaning of cube, and the value of cube. . . Rather, it is thinking about whether cube can exist outside of meaning.

I can continue to pay attention to cube and find other people's ideas and surrounding existence, but there is no way to get the answer to what cube is. Perhaps it is the constant endowment and addition of new interpretations that give the cube infinite meaning in different contexts, making it go beyond the shape itself and become a certain conscious and spiritual existence. I want to simplify and clarify, but I can't achieve it. The more researched, the less pure. Perhaps it is because of its simplicity and richness.

Maybe like “Existence precedes essence” (from Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre. Humanity has no meaning, and yet we keep searching for it anyway.

Muxin:

We have discovered many other spaces rather than just having a study on the cube itself. For example, the indescribable and incredibly insurmountable barriers between different languages (barriers and gaps are spaces), the gap between the things we spoke and the thing in our mind, and the gap between two people’s understandings of one same thing. Or the space of meaning of a word, the space of symbol and metaphor, the space of summarization, etc. I feel like we are traveling through the gaps between spaces and spaces, or maybe we entered some of the areas for a small first step. But I think I always have been accompanied by a sense of loss because I am unsure if we have ever fully explored any of the spaces I mentioned above.

I am afraid that things cube has brought us are more than we brought to you.

方Fang in Chinese has both meanings of cube and square.

I remember, “Fang” is a classifier in Chinese, we say one “Fang” of land. I suddenly got a crazy idea, a square of square, a cube of cube. Is everything a cube or a square?

Muxin:
Ins: nnianyuu
Weibo: 鲶里鲶利耶维奇
E-mail: 250541@network.rca.ac.uk

Fei:
Ins: f_ei6
Weibo: 费巨饿
E-mail: 235090@network.rca.ac.uk

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十步口(cube)一人 7/Feb

Cube meanings inside 8/Feb

Cube as a verb during covid-19

M: why the square is a cube?

F: Maybe like when you see a 2D cordon on the ground, you don't enter the space.

净化/规训/同化

疫情中：在cube中获得的自我安全感

为什么“方”是正方体，因为人是3d的，2d的限制对我们而言就是3d的。口是挖去了一个字、一个把“死”这个概念打码，但对于我们而言被挖去的并不只是一个写在纸上的、平面的东西。

画在地上的警戒线虽然是只在将同一个平面划为两块，可实际上人不会做出跨过警戒线的动作，我们会默认对面的一整个空间都是不可进入的。

When u keeping distance with others

加装机玻璃和塑料隔离板是为了保持人与人之间的距离的同时让我们能看到彼此，当然，这种隔绝本身也清晰可见。透明的有机玻璃和塑料是橱窗或展示柜的材质，它强调着里面的东西，强调着聚精会神地观看。

我意识到在这种塑料的cube隔间中人是没有隐私可言的，我们的神情举止都被透明的隔板放大了，人与人之间的距离、以及我们如何保持这样的距离，如果我们的后面有一位监督者的话，这一切都在他的眼中清晰可见。