Any Second Now...

Project Summary

The goal of this project was to present time in a way which deviates from our current socially accepted 12-hour clock and construct a prototype. I chose to study the anxiety-inducing elements of time and produce a machine which conveys that time is passing, and evokes a sense of nervousness in the audience.

Premise

I began this study by brainstorming the core message about time that I wanted to convey. I had recently watched Sun Yuan & Peng Yu's Art Exhibit, "Can't Help Myself," which features two robots endlessly trying to sweep motor oil back into their containment. It masterfully depicts the innate desire for survival in a melancholic way, and in I felt that in some abstract way, it's showing a passage of time, as the robots sweep until they no longer can. As I watched this exhibit, I felt an overwhelming sense of nervousness and despair around those two robots. That feeling is what inspired my sketches for this project.

So often, the passage of time makes us worried; there's deadlines to meet, not enough time in the day for work-life balance, and a looming sense that time is always fleeting. I wanted to create a piece which embodied that concept.

Final Design

I felt that paint squeezing out randomly would be the most effective way to:
➊ Make the observer aware that time is passing (or has passed), not necessarily of the exact time.
➋ Evoke feelings of anticipation and anxiousness with its three unknown variables:
+ when the paint will fall
+ where it will fall (+ if it splatters out of its container)
+ depletion of paint levels