dimension is night is night

"dimension is night is night" is "based upon Christine Hume’s text 'Nocturnal Dimensions of the Future' . . . In its original form, each poetry sequence was followed by a short prose text. Nelson organized his 'plaything' on the basis of 54 units (9 possible positions on each square face x 6 faces). Five cube faces contain lines from Christine Hume's poems, while the sixth face contains one image divided into 9 parts. The image, which could be a filtered colour photograph or a painting, suggests an indoor space with a door opening onto the outside. The indoor space is structured on the basis of darkness/light contrast, incoming light possibly coming from the sky as reflected by the sea. Nelson broke up Hume's four poems into five groups of lines. The five groups follow the original line sequence, with only two exceptions: the lines 'your lordish hours form unknown conduits/ and unknown songs empty into my lungs' (ll. 16-17, 3rd sequence) were left out. They were replaced by the lines 'is a way of worship if smashing waves / do not listen for where the sound ends' (i.e., ll. 14-15, 4th sequence – in Nelson’s cube these lines were interpolated in the 3rd sequence). Groups are distinguished by colour (red, black, blue, green, and yellow) and they are composed of 9 units (usually 2 or 3 lines per unit). Each unit is linked to one of the 9 squares on each face." -- Manuel Portela, The Codex and the Computer as Self-Reflexive Machines