Lambda Clock: The linkage on the bottom continually traces the shape on the top. The tip of the linkage indicates sunrise/sunset as well as what percentage through day/night. Light maple wood corresponds to day, dark walnut wood to night. Movement adapts to seasonal change in amount of daylight. One rotation = one day.
A collaboration with Tristan Huber
Moving Wedge: the clock hand traces the hours – one full sweep is 24 hours. two wedges are controlled by motors and move to indicate sunrise and sunset time throughout the year. dark color of the wedges indicate dark/night, light colored section indicate lightness/daytime. clock hand also indicates percentage through day/night the moment is. This sculpture is still in process.
A collaboration with Tristan Huber
Background
After 15 years as a mechanical engineer, I resumed a passion for creating art that had been put on hold. However a new artist emerged, a new artist that found connection and expression through computers and mechanical systems. I currently am focused on creating sculpture to augment/reframe the human experience.
Two current pieces: Lambda Clock and Moving Wedge, are new tools to induce gratitude for the sun as a timekeeper. The days in PNW are dynamic – the day, twice as long in summer as in winter. These two pieces show the viewer the dynamism of seasons we feel – mechanisms move in an orchestrated way to illustrate that change. In my experience, living with this new way of expressing time resets emotional priority around enjoyment and reverence for the sun’s presence and when waking in the night, relishing the remainder of darkness.
The capitalist structure of numeric time was designed to keep track of hours one is spent producing, hours until producing. It ascribes no weight to certain hours being more valuable than others – its concern is western expansion and accumulation of capital. Numeric time confuses our bodies and brains – those who look to relax or “waste” time are punished financially. A modern blue collar worker is 4x more productive than a worker in 1950, however the 8 hour day has not been reduced to 2 hours, instead the expectation about what can be produced has increased 4x also. A race for more productivity will no doubt lead to the collective burnout of our species, mental and physical. We see hints of this in events like the great resignation and the surge in union representation in the current era. I like to imagine a future that throws away GDP and required growth and replaces it with societal stability and environmental respect. I think throwing away numeric time is a small but required piece of that future.
All clocks I’ve created use GPS and a microcomputer to calculate information about sunrise/sunset and global location to control motion. Motors move pulleys and linkages to rotate the mechanisms of the clock. These clocks can also be moved anywhere in the habitable world and display a “correct reading”. My practice includes sketching by hand and designing on computers. I make things out of wood, metal and plastic in a small shop. Pieces are designed not only for existence but also for their destruction and their disposal.
