Inside The Cube
The story of the project from inception to the Metaverse
2004
One random day in 2004, I was taking the train with my mom in grand central station, and between our walk from the 4 train to the shuttle sat a man with a huge display of metrocard art glued onto cardboard. The guy manning the impromptu storefront was to busy folding a set of metrocards to see me watching him in fascination. He folded all 6 cards and linked them together to form a cube, paying me no mind the whole time. But he finally realized I was there as my mom was rushing me away to catch the train, he tossed me the cube and said it was mine, and I didn’t even get to thank him. I was obsessed with this cube, it peaked my curiousity, one of the questions running through my mind was “why?” I mean it was made out of metrocards that could have no value or have enough fare to last all month, yet this guy made them useless for arts sake. But the main question I had to solve in the immediate was “How?” I took apart the cube and studied the piece for quite a while before I could fold the metrocard the same way and another long while to understand how they linked together. And on some day in 2004 I made my first metrocard cube and it became my coolest pass time, anytime I had to ride the train for extended periods of time.
2007-2011
Like anything you’re obsessed with as a kid, it eventually gets old when you get to high school, but one thing I found amazing at the time was video games and hanging with friends. I couldn’t get enough of any open world game with a collectathon aspect, so I became a completionist, hunting platinum trophies and trying to raise my gamer score, all the while I’d be cutting class to go tag my friends roof or stairwell. I fell heavy into graffiti culture purely to just write my name on everything, but since I’m not the greatest grapher, I started studying legendary writers and making my way through the history. It got me interested in art so I use to go to the MOMA since it was a good place to cut class with no questions, and I’d be surrounded by amazing piece after amazing piece, I found myself staring at Pollocks, Warhols, and Monets work for hours. I would try to take some of those art style and recreate it in my graffiti but it never came out any good, so I kept with traditional tagging throughout high school.
2014
At this point I’m working at a school as an art teacher and I happen to teach a class on origami. The kids become obsessed with it, so to up the ante, I pull out metrocards and I show them how to make a cube with them. Their minds were blown just like mine was as a child. But one kid asked me can I put something in the center when I closed it, and to be honest, I hadn’t thought of storing anything in the cube until that very moment. It sparked an idea not safe for school. What if I put weed in the cube and leave them in random spots around the city, sort of like a Johnny Appleseed but with weed, so I guess Johnny appleweed? I started off by giving my friends weed in the cubes but they said it was either to pretty to break into or to complicated to put together once broken. With this feedback and the lack of funds to be as generous as I initially wanted to be, I decided to leave the cubes around the city filled with heart felt messages like “have a beautiful day” & “you are loved.” This just became something I did anytime I got 6 metrocards and some spare time on the train.
2017
I was still working as an art teacher by day but at night, the spray paint cans came calling once again. I would go out at night and hit random spots all over New York City only to get home and nap before work. One day at work another origami class came up and again I pulled out the good olé party trick of the metrocard cube and again the kids minds were blown. I brought it home with me and put on my desk next to my paint and immediately after making the connection I ran out to my backyard and set up a table. I sprayed the cube with red paint and a touch of black, and I left it out to dry. When I came back a few hours later, there sat a perfectly lacquered cube. It reminded me of what I thought Pandora’s box looked like in god of war or very reminiscent of that theme. I thought it’ll be a joke cause this box isn’t full of chaos but quite the opposite, with me still thinking of putting weed in them. I went to Instagram and tried to get @Pandorasbox but it was taken ages ago so I tried a couple of underscores and periods @s but it didn’t fit. Finally on some day in April I typed @PandoraCubes and it wasn’t taken and so my Art project for art sake was officially born. After a year of leaving them all around the city I started selling them at small fairs and online as ornaments and got a decent reception. But I had a career change and so the Pandora Cubes took a back seat to everything else until…
2021-
My brother invited me to some crypto parties and it showed me how easy NFT art was to mint onto the blockchain,. But as excited as I was, I hadn’t made a Pandora cube in over 2-3 years. But Through continuous attendance at crypto/NFT events such as NFT.NYC, Miami Art Basel, and local galleries, I was able to find an outlet for my art, one without the physical limitations from years prior.
With the advent of NFTs becoming more mainstream, it breathed new life into a long forgotten project. I started by Minting my old Instagram post on Rarible as a Profile Picture Project, all the while I organized the foundation for the Pandora Cube community on Twitter, Instagram, and Discord. then I moved to 3D mapping one of the physical cubes to create the base for future Generative and/or collaborative art projects.
my goal for the next year is to build community partnerships with artist and coders to evolve the Pandora Cube into a meta-object that not only has Unique Aesthetics but also has every day utility as well.
The Cube is an imitation of life itself – or even an improvement on life.
— Erno Rubik