Domino is a black and white rectangle with dots on its surface. It’s one part of a set of dominoes, which are used to play games in which a player places dominoes edge to edge against each other to form a line that ends in a specified total.
Dominoes can be made from wood, clay or other materials, and they come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some have rounded edges and others are square or rectangular with flat sides. They can be painted or decorated in many different ways. Some people use them to create art, while others place them on a board or table in long lines and knock them over.
The word domino comes from the Latin dominum, meaning “supreme” or “first.” Dominoes were first recorded as a game in Europe around 1750. The word “domino” also has an earlier sense, referring to the long hooded cloak worn together with a mask at carnival season or during a masquerade. It may have evoked the contrast of an ebony domino against a priest’s white surplice.
Some domino players use a grid to plan out their domino art before they start building. They mark out a design with arrows showing the direction that the dominoes should fall. Whether they are using straight lines, curved lines, grids that form pictures or 3D structures like towers and pyramids, this planning can help them create mind-blowing domino setups.
Hevesh creates her mind-blowing domino creations with a version of the engineering-design process. She considers the theme or purpose of her installation and brainstorms words or images she might want to include. Then she calculates how much space she needs to create her design and how many dominoes she’ll need to complete it.
Once she’s satisfied with her design, she starts placing the dominoes in long rows. As she goes, she pays special attention to the spots on each domino. She’ll try to align the tops and bottoms of each row, making sure there are no gaps or overlapping dominoes. She also takes the time to connect all the corners of the dominoes with each other.
As Hevesh plays, she starts to feel the energy travel from the first domino to the next. That’s because as the first domino falls, its potential energy transforms to kinetic energy, the energy of motion. This energy is transmitted to the next domino, giving it the push it needs to knock over the rest of the set. The process continues from domino to domino until the last domino has fallen. This is called the Domino Effect.