Exploring the way that language mediates landscape, The Desert Die is a six-sided, one foot square steel die which rests on a pedestal and features engravings of imaginary elements of the desert landscape, topography, built environments and wildlife of worldwide deserts on each side. Each time the die is "rolled," or turned and placed on its sides, a switch within the die triggers a recording of poetic/interpretive text describing the imaginary site. The Desert Die problematizes traditional informational gestures, such as the notion of embedded or stationary interpretive literature, and subverts the notion of wayside literature to define, orient, or frame from a single-point perspective. The die adds an additional five perspectives on a given point, investigating how an object can limit and manipulate experience in the landscape. The die is a book, creating a space of meditation and both focusing and complicating the viewer/readers' relationship with the landscape by making the reading occur outside. Furthermore, The Desert Die recognizes the imagination as a sixth sense, and that there are two maps laid over the world: one representing positive, material geography, and another representing visionary geography. Accordingly, the die is a visionary map that moves with the perceiver so that a posited-and imaginative-- center is all that is required.
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