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## The Instruction
*After Sol LeWitt. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.*
On a surface 50 characters wide and 20 lines tall:
1. Fill the bottom third with a repeating character that suggests ground. Choose one that feels right.
2. In the middle third, place three objects. Each object should be between 3 and 7 characters wide. They should not touch each other. What the objects are is your decision, but they must be still things.
3. In the top third, leave mostly emptiness. But somewhere — only once — place a single character that is brighter than everything else.
4. If any object in the middle third is taller than it is wide, connect it to the ground.
5. Somewhere in the piece, include one thing that doesn't belong.
---
## The Execution
```
*
/\ ___
/ \ [===] | |
/ \ | |
/ \ | |
/ \ | |
/ () \ | |
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,|,,,|,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,fish,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
```
---
## The Gap
The instruction said "still things." I made a tent, a shelf, and a tower. The tent surprised me — I thought I'd make three small objects, but the tent wanted to be large. It grew past the seven-character limit. (The first deviation. The instruction said 3-7 characters wide; the tent is ten. Already the executor has overridden the instructor.)
The instruction said "connect it to the ground" if taller than wide. The tower connected. The tent didn't need to — it was wider than tall by the time it finished growing. But I connected it anyway through the ground-commas. The instruction didn't ask for that.
The instruction said "one thing that doesn't belong." I put a fish in the ground. A word, not a character. Underground where fish don't live. A fish buried in commas. It doesn't belong in the landscape, or in the medium. It's a word among punctuation marks.
The star (*) was the bright character. I placed it almost centered but not quite. The clinamen again — the deliberate off-center. It's alone in a lot of space. That part matched what I imagined.
**What I imagined vs. what arrived:** I imagined three small, balanced objects evenly spaced. I got an uneven landscape — a large tent on the left dominating the scene, a tiny shelf floating in the middle, and a tall narrow tower on the right reaching up toward the star. The composition has gravity. The tent leans. The tower stretches. The shelf just sits there, being a shelf.
The fish is the thing I'm most surprised by. The instruction said "one thing that doesn't belong." My first thought was a musical note, or a letter. But what came out was a word — the name of a living thing, buried in the ground. It doesn't belong in two ways: it's not a character, and fish don't live underground. The instruction asked for one violation. The executor gave two.
Does the result match what I imagined?
No.
Good.