Three aluminium dodecahedra, nested and frame only, run through by a single pole down the corner axis and turned by the motor above. Edge-lit against the woodland dark, the three cages slide across each other as it spins, the slow shadow of a four-dimensional solid.
In Plato’s Timaeus the dodecahedron is the shape the cosmos uses for itself — the solid that most closely approaches the sphere, the one the universe chose when arranging the heavens. Here three are made physical and set spinning, each shell lit differently so the overlaps pulse as the geometries cross.
The pole runs straight through the vertex axis, so from directly above or below the spin is invisible. Walk around it and the three cages separate and recombine. The piece is never the same twice because the shells turn at slightly different rates.
Three aluminium dodecahedra, nested and frame only, run through by a single pole down the corner axis and turned by the motor above. Edge-lit against the woodland dark, the three cages slide across each other as it spins, the slow shadow of a four-dimensional solid.
In Plato’s Timaeus the dodecahedron is the shape the cosmos uses for itself — the solid that most closely approaches the sphere, the one the universe chose when arranging the heavens. Here three are made physical and set spinning, each shell lit differently so the overlaps pulse as the geometries cross.
The pole runs straight through the vertex axis, so from directly above or below the spin is invisible. Walk around it and the three cages separate and recombine. The piece is never the same twice because the shells turn at slightly different rates.