Revelation In his essay “The Clock and the Monastery,” Lewis Mumford writes: “In terms of the human organism itself, mechanical time is even more foreign: while human life has regularities of its own, the beat of the pulse, the breathing of the lungs, these change from hour to hour with mood and action, and in the longer span of days, time is measured not by the calendar but by the events that occupy it.” Taking Mumford’s words as inspiration, I experimented with physically interactive calendar forms. These timepieces involve the user as an contributing participant. One calendar asked the user to employ a hole puncher to punch away dates (or, implicitly, minutes and seconds) forcing him/her to acknowledge the passage, and subsequent loss, of each moment. Another calendar, was modeled afer a Scantron test form. By supplying the requisite #2 pencil with the calendar stack, I hoped to invoke the subconscious memory-action of the user. Filling in each bubble with the meticulous accuracy required of test-takers, the participant is simultaneously reminded of the standardization of time, and of the set of rote behaviors that everyday life often becomes. Revelation, an onion-shaped mobil, is the final result of my interactive calendar series. It captures the passage of time as tangible actions—resulting in change and accumulation. The layers of this calendar are peeled away month by month, altering its shape, and revealing a system of colors corresponding to each month. Past moments linger and hold fast, clinging to the form as the accumulation of the past and the |
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