Can you solve these simple equations and find the pattern?
This was the question I posed to friends on Facebook. Thanks to them I found some missing brackets and corrected the above image, representing digits as equations.
From this, I created a simple book reminiscent of a child’s counting book or math exercise book with a number represented on each page by its equation. If you include the answers to the equations (left as an exercise for the reader), each statement has all of the digits from zero to nine appearing only once. I created the book from a school desktop flip calendar, giving it a distressed old school look by painting the pages with a mixture of gouache and acrylic house paint. Letting the wet pages stick together before separating and applying a second coat produced the rough surface for the equations in pastel, sharpie and pencil.
The title of this work No. Digits is a play on the idea that “Number” is often abbreviated as “No.” and for each equation there is no digit for that specific number until you solve the equation.