“As a piece of technology, the clock is a machine that produces uniform seconds, minutes, and hours on an assembly-line pattern. Processed in this uniform way, time is separated from the rhythms of human experience. The mechanical clock, in short, helps to create the image of a numerically quantified and mechanically powered universe. It was in the world of the medieval monasteries, with their need for a rule and for synchronized order to guide communal life, that the clock got started on its modern developments. ” ——Understanding Media: The Extension of Man: Marshall McLuhan, Clocks: the Scent of Time
Time might be a grid.
The global time zone agreement divides time into 24 pieces, geographically. How long it is the distance on the land where one second travels? In providence, it is 345.6m.
To experience a spatial second, I constructed a time tank – a device filled with sand one carries on her back for experiencing time as a geographical and gravitic concept. Strapped to my back, I walked 345.6m from west to east in Providence and as the sand runs out, my body experiences the passage of a second.
Photos by Ke Peng