MM: I became obsessed by the idea that something outside your body has the power to make you think of something specific. If, for example, there are five sugar cubes outside your body and you see them, your mind forms the number five. It is unbelievably beautiful that our brains function in such a way. 

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I noticed that it seemed like I was looking at the world outside myself through a dull membrane; I perceived only a very small occurrence of the fives consciously in my daily life. I decided to make a room in my Self-Portrait as a Building—first a transparant closet, later a room—with in which all of the fives I would ever come across end up. I thought it was interesting that, since the world was full of fives, I would no longer be able to control my thoughts. Like a machine gun, the world fired fives at me. It was frightening. But with time, I discovered that the fives exhibited a kind of beautiful coherence: like a huge choir, they sang five to me in harmony. Sometimes, though, they could also differ beautifully from one another.

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