Instructional

“First, mark three dots on your page: the first dot should be halfway between the midpoint between the upper left hand corner and the midpoint between the center of the page and the midpoint of the left hand side and the bottom left hand corner of square with sides each a third of the length of the short side of the page. The second should be two thumbs up from the bottom right hand corner of the page at an angle of sixty degrees. The third should be along the radius produced by your fingertips when your wrist is placed on the bottom left hand corner of the page, where a line drawn where the first point halfway between the midpoint of the bottom side and the midpoint of the midpoint of the bottom side and the second point is the midpoint of the upper side crosses the radius. Next, join the first point and the third point. Then join the third point and the upper right hand corner, and the upper right hand corner and the second point. Draw a line which forms a triangle with height of 5cm between these two lines.”

The following are the three results other people obtained “compiling” by “code”. One thing that surprised me was that all two of my roomates decided to make the triangle a right-angled triangle, where one side is 5cm tall rather than making an isosceles triangle with overall height of 5 cm, which was what I would have done automatically. Second, all three asked me for a protractor in the middle. (I do not have one.) I had intended for the angle to be more of an indication than a precise measurement. Finally, I had intended for the triangle to show up in very near the center of the image, but slightly off to the side and slightly upwards in a “rule of thirds” fashion. This… did not come through. (I suppose using units like “thumb” and “radius of fingertips” did not help this.) Next time I will have to try to make composition a stronger element, and perhaps deviate somewhat from LeWitt and create a more artistic formula like those shown in the video.