Quadrangle

When I first took on the assignment of attempting Sol Lewitt’s Wall Drawing, I thought following instructions would be a very simple thing to do. Boy, was I wrong. Just in the first line, I was stuck trying to put parentheses around the groupings of words and just couldn’t get it right. Sure enough, an hour whittled away. So I tried to read a little about Lewitt instead.

I learned he was a German artist, and I was suddenly struck with the thought that the instructions I’ve been reading are probably a translation. When I looked through the instructions on how to draw the first line once more, I figured that there must have been a part omitted by accident. Here is what I think the first part should read:

… the first of which is drawn from [a point halfway between] a point halfway between point halfway between the center of the wall and the upper left corner and the midpoint of the left side and the upper left corner to a point halfway between the midpoint of the top side and the upper right corner…

This is the only way it made sense to me and allowed me to finish the drawing. Then again, I may just be bad at following instructions.

In conclusion, I thought this was a great demonstration of instructional art, and how an artists’ instructions must be as full-proof as possible for the desired results. This is definitely important as well when implementing code, as computers just churn out what you tell them to do without question.