Domino Art
Domino is a word that means “little one” in Spanish, but it also refers to a set of dominoes, the individual squares that make up a game played with a special scoring board. Some people line up their dominoes to create elaborate patterns, and others play games with them by matching the ends of different pieces together. Dominoes can be made of a variety of materials, but they are usually colored black or white with contrasting dots, called pips. A complete set of dominoes usually has 28 pieces. Dominoes are also sometimes called bones, cards, tiles, or stones.
In addition to the traditional blocking and scoring games of dominoes, they can also be used for educational purposes to teach children number recognition and basic math skills. Many of these games are adaptations of card games that were once popular in some areas to circumvent religious proscriptions against playing cards.
The most common type of domino is the double-six, a rectangular piece with six spots or pips on each end. Each end may have a value from one to six, or it may be blank. The sum of the values of both ends is the domino’s rank or weight, which enables players to identify and distinguish similar-looking pieces in the game. Larger sets of dominoes have more readable Arabic numerals instead of pips.
Some of the most beautiful Domino Art is done using curved lines, grids that form pictures when they fall, stacked walls, and 3D structures like towers and pyramids. Domino Art can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be – from a few lines that spell out a message to entire rooms filled with domino sculptures. You can even find artists who create domino setups for film, television shows, and events (like an album launch by pop singer Katy Perry).
Hevesh first learned about the domino effect as a child, when she would lay out a row of dominoes in order to make them topple with just the nudge of one. Now, at 20, she has made a career out of creating amazing domino displays for film, television, and events, and her YouTube channel is a hit with millions of viewers. Her largest setups can take several nail-biting minutes to fall, but they all work in the same way: the dominoes are set up carefully, and then allowed to tumble according to the laws of physics.
A lot of what makes a great story is how the characters react to each other. The best stories are like a row of dominoes: each scene builds on the last and affects the next in turn, like a chain reaction. Whether you are writing a story off the cuff or following a meticulous outline, looking at how scenes work together can help you plot your manuscript. What are the main actions in each scene, and how does it connect to the scenes before and after? This week’s Wonder of the Day is all about that.