A Spectrum of Jewels: An installation by Kaz Maslanka
Posted on 02. Mar, 2010 by DanielKalmar in Arts, LAB Gallery
March 5-26th, 2010, New York City– The Lab (for Installation and Performance Art) is pleased to announce the upcoming installation “A Spectrum of Jewels” by San Diego based artist/poet/mathematician Kaz Maslanka.
“A Spectrum Of Jewels” will feature what Maslanka calls a ‘Dodecaorthogonal Space Poem’. This type of ‘mathematical poem’ is constructed with twelve ‘orthogonal space poems’ arranged contiguously within a Cartesian coordinate system. Orthogonal space poems are always in the form of ‘A’ equals ‘B’ multiplied by ‘C’. What is different in this new work is that one of the variables in each poem is a fabricated word whose meaning comes from the mathematical operation applied to the other two variables (words). The words were carefully chosen to point to a spectrum inspired by Zen teachings. Thus, the aesthetic value of the piece is derived from visualizing the meaning of all the concepts spread throughout the entire three dimensional space.

The following statements are to help navigate the installation:
The yellow ball is the point of origin for the entire system. The green balls are points in space which represent the meaning of a concept which lies on one of the ‘word axes’. A word axis is a one dimensional line drawn between two concepts in space. In a three dimensional space you may have three ‘word axes’. The three word axes in this installation are “Emptiness/Thinking”, “Existence/Non-existence” and “Monasticism/Urbanity”. The red balls are points in space to delineate the coordinate pairs for which the orthogonal space poem starts. The poem lies on the planer space that lies between the red ball, the two adjacent green balls and the yellow ball. For a better understanding of visualizing these poems you may want to Google “verbogeometry” and “Orthogonal Space Poem”.
The twelve orthogonal space poems are:
Emptiness times Urbanity = Socrastival
Emptiness times Monasticism = Apecksuval
Emptiness times Existence = Doalldoxuval
Emptiness times Non-existence = Nonalldoxuval
Thinking times Urbanity = Selcrasaval
Thinking times Monasticism = Taoodoxuval
Thinking times Existence = Wastconditival
Thinking times Non-existence = Dreemholeval
Existence times Urbanity = Natucrasaval
Existence times Monasticism = Onkeval
Non-existence times Urbanity = Boidasval
Non-existence times Monasticism = Onkeval
For more information, or to schedule an interview with the artist, please contact Danika Druttman 212.339.2092
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Photos: Adam Wallace
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