THE ARCHIVE - main project

Since September 1, 1994, I have been working on a project with daily dice rolls and registrated the collected number sequences in an archive.

The project has been given the working title "one and one hundred dice rolls a day" and consists of the elements: base material, recipe, registration, collection, time and transformations:

base material

recipe

registration

collection

time

transformations

"one and one hundred dice rolls a day"

- every day a set of six dice are rolled
- once each morning, followed by one hundred times later the same day
- for every dice roll the combination of numbers is written down
- each die is marked and has its fixed place in the order

The numerical material is collected in binders.
One binder per month.
One post per day.
Left side - date, the first roll, location, and a consecutive day number.
Right side - date and four columns with the next one hundred rolls.

The binders are collected in specially made shelves made of untreated MDF.
Each shelf element has twelve compartments that are adapted to the binders.
In that way, the shelves work like a calendar: one room for each month, one shelf element for each year.
The shelf elements make the archive, as a collection, flexible in terms of assembly/placement.

The archive was displayed in an exhibition project at Dora Archive Centre in Trondheim from autumn 2012 to autumn 2019, installed at the expedition in connection with the reading room. The exhibition was a collaboration with the Regional State Archives of Trondheim, and of a long-term nature for an indefinite period - publicly accessible during the institution's opening hours. The dice roll archive was updated continuously and a presentation of ongoing sub-projects was replaced over time.

In exhibition contexts, the archive is sometimes presented in its entirety, at other times only with the relevant monthly binders. The form depends on the spatial qualities of the location - but always includes the project's rules and a set of six dice, and sometimes also with clockwork without hands. The archive is updated every day by sending the day's results to the gallery by e-mail, printing them there and inserting them into the relevant binder. The installation thus becomes a 1:1 meeting between project/artist and audience, in terms of action, time and place(s).

The installation was presented in exhibitions until 2010 with the title "mulig (i) : her/der" ("possible (in): here/there").
Since then, it has been presented under the project title "one and one hundred dice rolls a day".

details ...

January 16, 2022
day no. 10,000 in the project

map of the transformations per today

photo and illustrations © Annika Borg