Over nine spreads, the book Tic Tac Toe (2024) depicts every possible state of play of the ancient game. The first spread is mostly empty, and contains each of the three moves possible on the first turn: the center, a corner and a side. The subsequent spreads depict a progressive ballooning of possible combinations which then settles back down to smaller quantities in the final turns of the game. Paging through the book, the reader has the overwhelming experience of playing every possible game at once. Too dense and complex to be sketched out reliably by pencil and paper calculations (I tried!), yet just simple enough to be easily visually apprehended when presented in a grid, the finite combinations of each turn were calculated by brute force using a simple computer script.

Tic Tac Toe is similar to some of my other recent works, like Lifey (2016) and Dissection of the Square (2024), in that it harnesses the notion of transcendent mathematical certainty, not as a logical proof but as a cognitive experience. Each of these pieces in a different way exhaustively documents the interior space of a narrowly defined problem, a space that turns out to be surprisingly roomy, exposing a surfeit of variety within a straitjacket of constraint.

2024. 9.75 x 13.75". 20 pages. Signature sewn hardcover. Tan linen cloth with black foil stamped cover. Interior pages printed on rice paper. Edition of 100.