Cyclone

Evariste Richer

69,750 playing dice,
498 × 361 × 1,6 cm

-- thanks to the young people involved in the Job à Rennes scheme run by Mission Jeunesse
-- City of Rennes

Cyclone is an  artwork composed of tens of thousands of dice, placed directly on the floor, forming the pattern of an atmospheric depression. The dice, contrary to chance, have been carefully sorted and arranged according to a pattern defined from a satellite photograph. The image is broken down into six shades of gray: one being the lightest and six the darkest. The pointillism of the dice ('Braille in relief' according to Evariste Richer) evokes kineticism and causes retinal vibration as one approaches the spiral*.

* The artwork can also recall that of Fluxus artist Robert Filliou, Eins. Un. One... (1984), composed of 16,000 colored dice thrown randomly in the center of a wooden circle, and Mallarmé's poem 'Un coup de dés n'abolira jamais le hasard' (1897)."

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