Friday 30 May 2008

Transient time

This clock is a fantastic reminder about the transient nature of time.

It was created by Christiaan Postma who wrote "The starting point with this project was a personal study about form & time. I put together more than 150 individual clockworks and made them work together to become one clock. I show the progress of time by letting the numbers be written in words by the clockworks. Reading clockwise, the time being is visible through a word and readable by the completeness of the word, 12 words from “one” to “twelve”."





Composed of more than 150 individual clocks mounted to a 140 cm x 140 cm panel, hour and minute dials are clustered in a seemingly haphazard pattern. In actuality, the groupings have been meticulously arranged and the times coordinated so that when the time is say, twelve o' clock, a cluster of individual clocks at the top of the panel spell the word twelve. These groupings have been laid out to recreate the twelve hours of an analog clock. What happens when it's 3:30? Well, as three begins to pass into four, the former starts to disintegrate into illegible lines, while the latter starts to take the shape of an actual word, in this case, four. It's an engaging representation of the ephemeral quality of time, and a slow reminder of its inevitable passage.
Link

2 comments:

Michael said...

That is the coolest clock ever! I'd say I want one, but I'm sure it's one of a kind.

Rhyuso said...

Since posting this I've also wondered about the accuracy of the clocks - they would have to all be farily accuarate or you'd find the whole lot became a mess quite quickly.