oslepenikoncem

First proposed, 13 July at 14:25. Between Berlin and Brussels, 2009
Original initiative: Time Inventors' Kabinet (x-okno, 2010-2013)

1.

One can argue that within culture(s), the concept of time is an important one. The way we approach it, and organize our lives and actions based on that, defines in an important way the way we live. The invention of different mechanisms to measure and represent, or even manipulate time can be called modern. And modern times: mechanical, biological, scientific etc but all share the obsession with exactness. Think of the medieval bells and towers. Christiaan Huygens and the synchronisation of pendulums. The humanistic division of clock time. Einstein at the federal patent office in Bern. Atomic Time, measuring maybe nothing more than the uncontrollable, inaccurate deviant behaviour of the earth. Never really could go through Bergson. Remember Ilya Prigogyne. Visit the ruins of the The Tower of the Winds or the Horologion of Andronikos Kyrrhestes on the Roman Agora in Athens, a horologion 2nd century BC.

2.

Some former notes can make one smile. “The idea is that each epoch has its own vision on time and that now the networked ecotime has to be invented, based on human and machinic artifacts, and their relationships that make up the network of time for the activities to be developed there… so a new time concept, as irriversable as the previous ones, is to be made, but based on the algorithmisation of all media, the open source and ready availability of technology and concepts, the collaboration in which time is being established within the communication… hence _ the idea of an alternative energetic machine, mobile and easy to install/connect to your computer/mobile devices, try to share by interpolating the individual to make a new kind of common sense in time.”

3.

Maybe an interest that shifted, working with wind-sensitive devices, to the phenomenon of wind itself, the play with different materials, generating a variable resistance. Relating it to our senses, how we all experience weather, with our body here and now, walking, running, sitting in the grass or snow. Feeling the difference on your skin while it rains as well, when the directions of the streams of cold air are suddenly turning. The first warm winds between spring and summer. Seasons and years pass. Abandoning gradually city life for staying out there. Watching the tops of trees from the window. Setting up yet another lab on the open field. But for different reasons.

4.

Re-reading Raymond Roussel, Impressions d'Afrique, on l'horloge à vent (p. 138).

« L’horloge à vent du pays de Cocagne, » – reprit Fuxier, qui amplifia son annonce par le commentaire suivant : Dans le bienheureux pays en question, le vent, parfaitement régulier, se chargeait bénévolement d’indiquer l’heure aux habitants. À midi juste il soufflait violemment de l’ouest et s’apaisait progressivement jusqu’à minuit, moment poétique où régnait un calme plat. Bientôt une légère brise venue de l’est s’élevait peu à peu et ne cessait de croître jusqu’au midi suivant, qui marquait son apogée. Une saute brusque se produisait alors, et, de nouveau, la tempête accourait du ponant pour recommencer son évolution de la veille. Remarquablement adaptée à ces fluctuations invariables, l’horloge soumise en effigie à notre appréciation remplissait son office mieux que le banal cadran solaire, dont la tâche uniquement diurne est sans cesse entravée par le vol des nuages.