10 Tredecillion Teaspoons
(Unlikely but Not Impossible) 2026
(As 10 Tredecillion Mirabel Studios 2015)
Cardinal Red Studio
Virginia USA
Objects of diverse shapes and sizes proliferate at Ikea, offering innumerable potential juxtapositions. More striking, however, is the sheer quantity of any single type of object. This aggregation of identical items generates a particular conceptual condition: repetition becomes not incidental but structural. The multitude of teaspoons, for instance, is not merely abundant but suggestive of endless extension; one might imagine that Georges Perec would recognize in such a display a familiar logic of enumeration and the infra-ordinary.
Yet it was not the teaspoons that ultimately held my attention. Affixed to nearly every display was a booklet of disposable paper tape measures. These objects appear, at first glance, entirely functional. However, their purpose is immediately called into question. The majority of products already have their dimensions clearly printed on accompanying labels, rendering the tape measure functionally unnecessary. Their presence, therefore, does not resolve a lack but produces a redundancy.
(Unlikely but Not Impossible) 2026
(As 10 Tredecillion Mirabel Studios 2015)
Cardinal Red Studio
Virginia USA
Objects of diverse shapes and sizes proliferate at Ikea, offering innumerable potential juxtapositions. More striking, however, is the sheer quantity of any single type of object. This aggregation of identical items generates a particular conceptual condition: repetition becomes not incidental but structural. The multitude of teaspoons, for instance, is not merely abundant but suggestive of endless extension; one might imagine that Georges Perec would recognize in such a display a familiar logic of enumeration and the infra-ordinary.
Yet it was not the teaspoons that ultimately held my attention. Affixed to nearly every display was a booklet of disposable paper tape measures. These objects appear, at first glance, entirely functional. However, their purpose is immediately called into question. The majority of products already have their dimensions clearly printed on accompanying labels, rendering the tape measure functionally unnecessary. Their presence, therefore, does not resolve a lack but produces a redundancy.
This redundancy is revealing. The tape measure does not meaningfully extend the shopper’s capacity to measure; rather, it stages the act of measurement itself. It suggests that visualisation requires verification, even when the object is physically present. A product such as the IKEA GOJIBÄR plant pot with stand, explicitly described and immediately visible, can be both seen and read, yet still demands to be measured. In this context, the tape measure becomes less a tool than a prop within a system of consumption.
From this, a more destabilising question emerges: if the means of measurement are redundant, might the objects they serve also participate in this redundancy? The GOJIBÄR plant pot with stand is not simply an item for purchase but part of a proliferating field in which objects, measurements, and representations multiply beyond necessity.
Returning to the studio with a number of these freely acquired tape measures, I began to consider repetition at another scale. How many such objects are produced, distributed, and discarded? How many teaspoons circulate alongside them? These questions shift attention from the individual object to systems of production and quantity.
Counting the tape measures in my possession, I arrived at the number forty-two, a figure that inevitably recalls Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. While coincidental, this resonance underscores the tendency of numbers to accrue meaning beyond their immediate function.
Reconfiguring the tape measures into a tight coil, I allowed only the terminal zeros of their printed “100” markings to remain visible, with a single “100” at the outer edge. The result was a numerical form: a ‘one’ followed by forty-three ‘zeros’. This figure, ten tredecillion, corresponds approximately to the estimated total mass, in grams, of all the stars in the Milky Way.
Here, the logic of accumulation reaches an extreme. A disposable measuring device, replicated and gathered, becomes a model of cosmic scale. Yet even this vast number remains finite, still closer to zero than to infinity. What it reveals is not infinity itself, but the mechanism by which it is imagined: the repetition of identical units, extended beyond comprehension.
In this sense, the systems encountered within IKEA, of multiplication, redundancy, and display, do not merely reflect consumption but provide a framework for thinking about scale itself. The smallest units, repeated without apparent limit, produce the conditions through which vastness becomes conceivable.
From this, a more destabilising question emerges: if the means of measurement are redundant, might the objects they serve also participate in this redundancy? The GOJIBÄR plant pot with stand is not simply an item for purchase but part of a proliferating field in which objects, measurements, and representations multiply beyond necessity.
Returning to the studio with a number of these freely acquired tape measures, I began to consider repetition at another scale. How many such objects are produced, distributed, and discarded? How many teaspoons circulate alongside them? These questions shift attention from the individual object to systems of production and quantity.
Counting the tape measures in my possession, I arrived at the number forty-two, a figure that inevitably recalls Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. While coincidental, this resonance underscores the tendency of numbers to accrue meaning beyond their immediate function.
Reconfiguring the tape measures into a tight coil, I allowed only the terminal zeros of their printed “100” markings to remain visible, with a single “100” at the outer edge. The result was a numerical form: a ‘one’ followed by forty-three ‘zeros’. This figure, ten tredecillion, corresponds approximately to the estimated total mass, in grams, of all the stars in the Milky Way.
Here, the logic of accumulation reaches an extreme. A disposable measuring device, replicated and gathered, becomes a model of cosmic scale. Yet even this vast number remains finite, still closer to zero than to infinity. What it reveals is not infinity itself, but the mechanism by which it is imagined: the repetition of identical units, extended beyond comprehension.
In this sense, the systems encountered within IKEA, of multiplication, redundancy, and display, do not merely reflect consumption but provide a framework for thinking about scale itself. The smallest units, repeated without apparent limit, produce the conditions through which vastness becomes conceivable.