Keeping Time is both a reframing
and a reclaiming of time. It is an exploration and rejection of conventional methods of timekeeping, inviting contemplation into long term futures and shifting perceptions and experiences of temporality.
and a reclaiming of time. It is an exploration and rejection of conventional methods of timekeeping, inviting contemplation into long term futures and shifting perceptions and experiences of temporality.
Keeping Time takes the form of an ongoing collection of design explorations (timepieces) which initiate dialogue around hegemonic notions of time.
Timepiece #2
Our understanding and measurement of time is no longer determined by the movement of celestial bodies, but by the frequency of an atom’s vibration.
The earth’s rotations are slowing down at an approximate rate of 1.4 - 1.7 milliseconds per century, proposing the idea that our time measurement system will eventually fall out of synchronisation with the rotations of the earth and we will lose all relationship with the planetary movements.
The earth’s rotations are slowing down at an approximate rate of 1.4 - 1.7 milliseconds per century, proposing the idea that our time measurement system will eventually fall out of synchronisation with the rotations of the earth and we will lose all relationship with the planetary movements.
Timepiece #2 is an audio account of seconds re-calibrated to the slowed rotation of the earth, engaging with ideas of synchronicity, futural time and time in flux. Within two separate vessels, audio of a clock ticking can be heard; the first tick repeats every second; the second, every 1.00000162 seconds – the length a second would be 10,000 years in the future if calibrated to the changed rotation of the earth.
Through this work, two temporalities are brought into co-existence. I expose a critical flaw in the design of timekeeping, questioning the validity and reliability of our conception of time and asking us to consider the long-term future. The isolated nature of the two ticks, which play on loop, evokes an extended sense of ‘now’, arguing against the fixity of time by presenting a fluid and shifting temporal landscape. This piece exists without record of passed time or evidence of duration; fluctuating in and out of synchronisation with each other, forming an eternal now which extends beyond our contemporary conception of the present.
Timepiece #1
What do we actually measure when we measure time?
In contrast to conventional clocks, whose purpose is to position us in a precise yet narrow indication of ‘now’, this clock presents ‘now’ as an unspecified and extended duration which exists beyond the length of a day, and asks us to engage in long term thinking. It provides no fixed points of reference or measurement, yet displays the time that has passed through the artificial weathering of the rock, and future time that exists in the material that is yet to be ground down. A metal hand wears away the rock as it rotates - the clock becomes a measure of its own time and materiality.
Timepiece #3
Timepiece #3 is an email based subscription service where recipients receive the 5,423 words which comprise my honours paper one word at a time through a daily scheduled email. My intention is to transcend this project from the one-year set timeframe to continuing for the next 14.85 years. Timepiece #3 invites speculation into a future. It looks at ideas of wasted, unproductive time; the text disjointed, non-cohesive and static, received slowly, durationally, word-by-word. It acts as a measurement of time within itself, and is fixed in its duration – a subscription partway through the service will deliver only part of the text.
This piece began on June 9th 2017, and is scheduled to end on April 13th 2032.
