Imagine a box, like that which might contain oatcakes, only a little flatter and broader, and plain in its appearance. The lid of the container is opened, which is to say, is being opened at the moment at which we intervene. It is likely that there is a hand - perhaps two hands: one steadying the container at its base, the other unfastening the lid.

Now we are surprised to see from the opened box spewing forth, a great profusion of small, four-sided pyramidal forms. (Obviously, attention has to be paid to the wording of this description: ?profusion’ might be the wrong term. Or maybe it is its use next to ?spewing’ that seems unnatural.) The idea must be communicated that smaller volumes come in a great quantity and in the split second of their first appearance it is clear to the innocent viewer that there is not room in the oatcake container-like box - or by the normal rules of physics, there should not be room in the container - for this quantity of 3-dimensional objects of this approximate volume.

And what does it tell us that they spring forth with this sound - like playing cards being shuffled?

Some form of illusion is being acted out. The volumes that appear in such enthusiastic quantities from within a container patently too small to hold them, must be folded in their containment; with the releasing of the lid, the flattened components spring into 3-dimensional mode. This is the sound, and the reason for their explosive appearance.

To work out exactly how this might be achieved is the problem, and the first step is to make a model. An increase in scale will help. The model will focus on a detail - on one pyramidal form, and the mechanism that allows the volume to spring from its folded form.

On another level, what is of interest here is the theme of ?something from nothing’. What is made apparent through trickery with the box and its four-sided pyramids may be compelling because of our intuition that such a generative event is the natural capacity of all space, and not just of the plain cardboard box described above. And as with the viewing of the illusion, when this idea is sown in the mind, we might crave to see the dynamism of space within space. However, in keeping with the logic of the craving, evidence of this dynamism seems to us to be deficient in its frequency.