When you think of domino, your mind might turn to those amazing domino constructions, where hundreds or even thousands of pieces are set up in careful sequence and then tipped over with the slightest nudge. They fall in a rhythmic cascade that seems impossible to engineer, but is really just the natural result of the laws of gravity. Dominoes are a metaphor for how scenes in a story work together to create the overall structure and flow of the narrative.
Each domino, also known as a bone, card or men, is rectangular in shape and twice as long as it is wide. The domino’s identity-bearing face is divided by a line or ridge into two squares, each bearing an arrangement of dots, called pips, which are used to determine the value of the piece in a game. A domino with more pips has greater value than one with fewer pips, or none at all. In the most basic domino variant, each player draws seven tiles from a stock (also called a boneyard) and then places them on-edge in front of him or her. Each player then checks the values of his or her remaining unplayed tiles, and scores the total.
Dominoes were first recorded in the mid-18th century, and are most often used to play positional games. Each domino has a specific value determined by the number of pips on its edges, and each end of a domino must touch another domino with identical or matched pips to be considered valid. The resulting configuration of dominos, or a “line-up” as it is sometimes referred to, becomes the target for the game.
In addition to the traditional line-up games, dominoes can be used in a variety of other ways. Players can place the dominoes on the table in order to form a pattern, which may have a specific value, or simply be decorative. The dominoes can also be stacked up in 3D to make structures, and the rules of each game vary slightly depending on how the players wish to use them.
The most popular domino game in the world is called double-six, which can be played with as few as two people. Most domino sets have 28 tiles and are shuffled to form a stock, or boneyard, and each player draws seven dominoes from the stock. The first person to place a domino wins that round.
Hevesh, the domino artist whose YouTube videos have garnered more than 2 million subscribers, follows an engineering-design process to create her mind-blowing creations. She starts with the overall theme or purpose of an installation, then brainstorms images or words that might be relevant. She then makes test versions of each section of a display, and films them in slow motion to identify any mistakes or issues. Once the individual sections work properly, Hevesh builds up her displays. The largest 3-D arrangements go up first, followed by flat arrangements and then lines that connect the various sections together.