Domino is a gender-neutral name that keeps its bearer’s eye on advantageous opportunities. From the Latin dominus, domino means “master,” and it is the ideal name for an entrepreneur who’s always looking to put his or her best foot forward. A savvy businessperson knows that success isn’t just about the bottom line—it’s about creating a brand that people want to interact with. That’s why so many companies are trying to do whatever they can to get a piece of the pie—even if it means embracing a little bit of the domino effect.
A domino is a game piece, usually a rectangular clay tile with one side bearing an arrangement of dots or “pips” like those on a die and the other blank or identically patterned. A domino may also be divided by a line or ridge into two squares, with each square bearing the same pattern as the other. In addition to the standard blocking and scoring games, dominoes can also be used to play games of a very different character, most of which were developed as adaptations of card games to circumvent religious proscriptions against playing cards.
When a domino is flipped over and set down on the table, much of its potential energy is converted to kinetic energy, giving the next domino the push it needs to fall. And so on, as each successive domino falls, it transmits its energy to the next until the entire sequence is completed.
Using the same principle, Hevesh starts each project by considering the theme or purpose of an installation. Then she brainstorms images or words that she might use to make a design, which she then plans out using dominoes to create grids that form pictures or walls or 3-D structures like towers or pyramids.
Hevesh uses fractions to determine how many tiles she’ll need for a particular layout, as well as how they’ll be arranged on the table. This helps her keep the layout in check so that an accidental knock toppling doesn’t bring the whole thing crashing down. “I’m pretty good at preventing big accidental topples, but smaller ones happen in just about every project,” she says.
In most domino games, players draw a number of tiles from the stock to form their hands. When a player draws more than he is permitted to draw, that is, more than seven tiles for his hand, the extras must be removed from the stock and reshuffled before the players draw their hands again.
When determining seating arrangements in a game with more than one player, the player holding the highest domino drawn from the stock takes first seat, then the next player seats himself to his left, and so on. Alternatively, the winner of the last game opens the next round by drawing new dominoes from the stock. The heaviest double, or the heaviest single, begins play in most games. In other games, the winning player may open the next round by counting the pips on all of the losing players’ remaining tiles at the end of a hand or game.