Yesterday I found, buried in the German poetry section in the basement of the library, Lawrence Weiner’s book “Statements”. An amazing little text consisting of instructions for creating “General” and “Specific” works, this one stood out in particular (formatting Weiner’s):
A piece of masonite painted allowed
to dry
Sanded for a certain time elapsure w
ith a standard flat finishing sander
And secured to the wall or floor
At first thinking of creating the piece in it’s original format, I instead updated it in Photoshop. I created a 480×960 pixel image (the same proportions as a sheet of plywood) and, using Random.org’s random number generator, I created a random background color consisting of three RBG values converted to web-safe mode. I then created an eraser that was the 4″ (40px in my model, same as my sander) and “sanded” the image for a random period of time (198 seconds) determined by Random.org.