What Dot saw on a Walk

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Written By MARCIA KURE

The story details a straight blue line who is hopelessly in love with a red dot. The dot, finding the line to be stiff, dull, and conventional, turns her affections toward a wild and unkempt squiggle. Taking advantage of the line's stiffness, the squiggle rubs it in that he is a lot more fun for the dot.

The depressed line's friends try to get him to settle down with a female line, but he refuses. He tries to dream of greatness (seeing himself as a daredevil, a leader in world affairs, a law enforcer, a vital element in the art world, and a sportsman) until he finally understands what the squiggle means and decides to be more unconventional. Willing to do whatever it takes to win the dot's affection, the line manages to bend himself and form angle after angle until he is nothing more than a mess of sides, bends, and angles. After he straightens himself out, he settles down and focuses more responsibly on this new ability, creating shapes so complex that he has to label his sides and angles in order to keep his place.

When competing again, the squiggle claims that the line still has nothing to show to the dot. The line proves his rival wrong and is able to show the dot what she is really worth to him. When she sees this, the dot is overwhelmed by the line's responsibility and unconventionality. She then faces the now nervous squiggle, whom she gives a chance to make his case to win her love.

The squiggle makes an effort to reclaim the dot's heart by trying to copy what the line did, but to no avail. No matter how hard he tries to re-shape himself, the squiggle still remains the same tangled, chaotic mess of lines and curves. He tries to tell the dot a joke, but she has realized the flatness of it, and he's forced to retreat. She realizes how much her relationship with the squiggle had been a mistake. What she thought was freedom and joy was nothing more than sloth, chaos, and anarchy.

Fed up, the dot tells the squiggle how she really feels about him; denouncing him as meaningless, undisciplined, unkempt, unaccountable, insignificant, indeterminant, inadvertent, out of shape, out of order, out of place, and out of luck. She leaves with the line, having accepted that he has much more to offer, and the punning moral is presented: "To the vector belong the spoils." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dot_and_the_Line

Paul Klee:

A line is a dot that went for a walk

Question:

Where did the dot go?

What did the dot see? Who did the dot meet? How did the dot feel on the walk?

#studionotes

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

Directed by Chuck Jones

Co-directed by Maurice Noble

Narrated by Robert Morley

Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film (1965).

MARCIA KURE

Marcia Kure lives and works between the United States and Nigeria. She trained at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and is an alumna of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine.

Kure has held solo exhibitions across Nigeria, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Her work has been presented in major international exhibitions and biennials, including La Triennale, Paris (2013); the International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Seville (2006); and the Sharjah International Biennial (2005). In 2014, she participated in the 11th Dak’Art Biennale of Contemporary African Art, Dakar, Senegal. She was also included in Body Talk, a traveling exhibition presented at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; FRAC Lorraine, Metz; and Lunds Konsthall, Sweden. Additional group exhibitions include Not a Single Story at Wanås Konst, Sweden, and NIROX Sculpture Park, Johannesburg (2018–19).

Kure has held academic and research appointments internationally, including Visiting Professor at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2019–20); Research Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution (2008); and Visual Artist in Residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2014). She is the recipient of the Uche Okeke Prize for Drawing (1994).

Her work is held in major public collections, including the British Museum, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; The Menil Collection, Houston; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Newark Museum of Art; the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; the Princeton University Art Museum; the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art; the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University; Iwalewahaus, Bayreuth; and FRAC Lorraine, among others.

https://www.marciakure.com/
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