Slowtime
I was looking for more project ideas with the EL wire and wax combination and just thought a clock would be nice. Why not I thought... not quite as simple as that. What is time? I mean there are so many clocks in the world and there's no point reinventing the wheel. How can we describe it in alternative and pleasing ways? ...at least for the challenge I've set myself here.
Whoa there!
We live in a world increasing preoccupied with micro moments; breaking the second down into ever smaller more time increments: faster broadband, people grabbing their smart phone between breaths to play a cheeky 50 second game of Angry Birds or check if anyone has contacted you since you last looked, probably 2.22555 minutes prior. The incessant need to cram more into every second. Our perception of time has changed irrevocably over the last century.
A machine's concept of time isn't bound by the organic limitations of the human brain and its animal perception of time. Ever increasing computer processing time will mean a second can be an eternity especially when thinking in milli/nano seconds. Faster, faster, faster... How fast are we willing to go before we can't go any faster any more? As a philosophical stand, maybe it's time to chill and see things nature's way again a little.
Concept: Reclaim the Slow
I wanted to create an abstract interpretation of time as a reaction to this ever more pervasive rush towards speed. Nature's idea of time is vastly different to our own. It is a paradox that geological time has produced the minerals and materials that we use for ever faster technology. I'm fascinated by the patience and enormous timescales involved with geological time as nature truly works on the billion year big picture.
I say that if its good enough for mother nature; it's good enough inspiration for me. She's spent time getting it right.
Note
Our ancient studies of the Sun and Moon (Sumerian and Egyptian) are what conceived our calendars and increments of time as they are now. 12 is a special number for lots of reasons, but that's a different story.
Concept: 1 Ring = I hour
Slowtime: I wanted to represent time not as a clock in the usual sense but as a homage to the slow pervasive rhythm of nature using tree rings as inspiration.
Although abstract in design, the viewer would tune into the slow and perceive time as expanding/contracting concentric rings in 12 hour increments and cycles. Each hour has its own shape in the cycle which the viewer would recognise over time. You would never know exactly what the time is but that is the point, just a rough idea - but hey that's alright; there's no rush.
(Images courtesy of Google search)
1AM
2AM
3AM
4AM
5AM
6AM
7AM
8AM
9AM
10AM
11AM
NOON
1PM
2PM
3PM
4PM
5PM
6PM
7PM
8PM
9PM
10PM
11PM
Midnight
