Any physicist will tell you we live in at least three dimensions. There’s a debate about a fourth, fifth and sixth dimension, perhaps endless dimensions. Add to that the belief in past life, future life and life beyond life and it would seem ridiculous to spend the final half century of my life focusing on the two dimensional world. Wasn’t it Filippo Brunelleschi who “invented” perspective drawing and changed the way we saw things forever forward? Even if the perspective drawing is a two dimensional illusion of three dimensional objects, the intent was to create depth on flat surfaces. So, with all the technologies available to me, and presently at my fingertips to create fantastical visions of spatial dimensions of three dimensional media, here I commit myself to the lifetime pursuit of perfecting the second dimension; the x and the y. Like one and zero, x and y live side by side, and by their relationship they provide mathematical proof of distance. Why would I ignore z? Ah, the third variable. Beyond the second. The one that is the mathematical proof of depth, and when combined with distance it creates the cold indisputable reality we in our bodies and minds as seen through our two eyes, like the rangefinder camera, accept as our world. We step forward, we step sideward, we kneel, we rise and we rotate.

So much effort and energy is committed to creating three dimensional worlds with the ancient Renaissance lessons of perspective now encoded into complex algorithmic formulas, calculating with infinitesimal accuracy at nearly the speed of light to produce the spatial forms we already accept as reality. Working three dimensionally is the exploration of our proven existence as we perceive our reality to be.

What challenges this artist is the knowledge that there are in fact other dimensions. I believe in all of them. I believe in the zero dimension. I recognize the point as the essential beginning of all things. I hear the arguments that the point has a position; it can be defined by coordinates as to its location. Not so in the first dimension. The point is.

I too, live in our commonly accepted third dimension. My arms and hands are in front of me and the chair I sit in is below and behind me. My entire life, and all our lives exist here, and we can be positioned, defined and located by three variables.

The most mysterious dimension I can explore rationally is the dimension between the point and the position; the plane. The second dimension. My creative experiences exist in the two dimensional world defined by the x and y, where z is not rejected; it does not exist. There is no z. And for that, I live in complete freedom to explore the perfection of x and y, the quintessential ratio which, curiously is not so unlike the binary code others use to define that unpredictable z. Mention of the binary code suggests the common denominator in all things as defined and constructed by the computer. At its most basic life form, it lives as one and zero. The point is. Before life can exist in the plane, this relationship must occur. Zero and zero is darkness and without point, without substance, without matter. The birth of the second dimension occurs at one and one. The plane; in its most gloriously pure form. This form is so pure it cannot be reduced. It cannot be damaged or distorted. From its beautiful essence from birth, it reverts back to one and zero. Or zero and zero.

With very few exceptions, and I know I must make confessions to the exceptions, I work within the perfection of one and one; the square plane. Embracing as I do, this plane shaped by this proportion, is the liberation of my boundaries to explore the things I explore, knowing within the square lies the infinite dimension which cannot be mathematically prescribed. The plane is my portal into dimensions unquantifiable, and incomprehensible by rationalism or physics. It is something I see as a kind of planar infinity, elastic in truth, where the intangible can be examined. Where the emotionalism of our humanity is studied and equalized in its relativity. What lives within the one and one is uncharted, and as I have been peering at its glorious face, it has begun to reveal secrets of illusion and deceit, truth and establishment.


It all starts here. Architecture is my background. Visualization is my foreground. I used to believe in architecture as the pinnacle moment of the convergence of art and science. Beauty and Physics conjoined in the perfect marriage with socialism; buildings reached out to the people, embraced them, sheltered them, and inspired them. My twenty plus years practicing as employee to other architects destroyed this nirvana with the ugly truth that most architects are technicians. Very, very few will ever understand what it is they are actually doing.

Tags: 2D, theory, liquidoranges, reese schroeder