Platonic Solids and the Elements

I've been doing a little bit of exploration with a bit of possible content, Plato's theoretical connection of 3-D polyhedra with the 'elements'. I've spent a lot of time - probably too much - doing initial research, rather than exploring possible visual forms I could use to communicate my content, so continuing to read through Plato's theory's was the point of this task. What I need to start looking at is ways of delivering/making sense of the confusing mess that is the content i've looked at so far. Anyway, the point is, these are some experiments I've been doing with these ideas' as content. The first was some work on Photoshop and Illustrator. Using illustrator I drew out some of the elements, using them as a frame, I dragged the vector files into photoshop and used a generated .RAW file and experimented with levels to create the illusion of shading/three-dimensions. I used found images to communicate the ascription of all the regular polyhedra to their elements.

Altogether, these aren't incredibly successful, especially because it's easy to compare them visually with the thousands of other illustrations/work relating to the Platonic Solids. I can't imagine many people would understand the ideas behind the various shapes purely from these visuals. In fact no-one I've spoken too knew - without me pointing mentioning their relation to the elements - what they were related to at all. My main focus isn't trying to communicate this particular concept, the point is to engage with the idea of them being more than just shapes that are nice to look at.