Most things in life are temporary — all living things will one day meet death, humans experience at least five emotions a day, and the meal in front of us disappears after just ten minutes. In art, there are various ways the passage of time is portrayed: 1) death (sorry to bring it up first again) — a skeleton, a withering flower, aging bodies/skin, 2) nature — a sunrise/set, a flame, 3) a pause in time — rather than the passing and, 4) music — an action that passes time. There are many representations of time in everyday objects and experiences.
We can look to the natural world around us to draw inspiration. Taking realistic features of the living world, we may be able to re-envision them metaphorically to express time in design and technology. Temporal processes like frosting, blooming, wearing, and tearing express traces of time in reality. For example, Andy Goldsworthy, a British artist known for his site-specific installations involving natural materials and the passage of time — otherwise called an “Earth Artist” — uses the world around him to express impermanence (see video). As I brainstorm ideas for the Alternative Clock project, I’m drawn to incorporating elements of nature to help me express time as well: ice melting, water running down through a maze, a person’s face aging into a bones, petals of a flower dropping, an hourglass. What has your brainstorming process looked like, and what are some of your ideas so far?
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