This is the script of the talk, presented at the TED Fellows Retreat 2015, on Aug 27, 2015, Monterey, CA.
For the past few months, E Roon and I worked on The Personal Timekeeper v.1, an electronic device that gives form to the user’s personal sense of time. We designed and fabricated a custom hardware and software system for a participatory performance and workshop at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) held on 7/18~19 2015 titled Circle of Moment Measurement.
What is time really? As humanity, we collectively agree on using Universal Time as a standard to keep things in order in an increasingly synchronized and complex society. However, is it the only way to measure your time on this earth? What if we re-design time based off of your perception of moments?
Timekeeper Invention Club is an occasional workshop that explores the meaning of ‘personalized time.’ As part of the 2014 LACMA Art + Technology Lab commission In Search of Personalized Time (I—S—O—P—T), the Club contributes to the research and public engagement goals
This past Saturday, Roon and Taeyoon held the first meeting of the Real Time Film Club. I unfortunately could not attend — I was hosting an out-of-town friend, and my schedule was subject to his jetlag. But this morning we met and they recounted the evening to me, and it sounded like a great time. They are happy with how it went.
Real-Time Film Club is a casual, sporadically held series of meet-ups meant to generate in-depth discussions around I-S-O-P-T with likeminded artists, scientists, and thinkers. At Real-Time Film Club, a screening may or may not involve watching films that present themselves as “real-time” (think Run Lola Run), and it may or may not involve mechanisms for playing with the film’s temporality. The name itself is intentionally a bit mysterious and maybe even misleading, and we hope that the screenings follow in a similarly contingent spirit.
I had a video call with Chris Malachowsky, the co-founder of NVIDIA who also serves as an advisor for Art + Technology Lab program at LACMA. Here’s part of the message I sent him a few days before.
“We’re interested in creating alternative methods of giving form to time. The idea is to stage a network of clocks (with distributed users behind them) that can synchronize and desynchronize with one another, collectively determining the temporal status of both each part and the whole.
In early 2000s, a close friend of mine was running a design studio in Shanghai, China, and I visited him one summer for a few days. The following is a story my friend told me over drinks, recounted as clearly as I remember it.
Quantification is at the heart of modern societies on all levels – from GDP and census to personal bank accounts, Dropbox, and Gmail. Everything is constantly changing and we measure each change in various ways in order to feel in control. If there’s one thing that doesn’t change, it is the speed of time passing. Since it is a rare (if not only) constant in our life, time became the indispensable central unit of all kind of measurements.
We went to LA for our first visit to LACMA Art + Technology Lab.
We ordered some books that are related to the project. We plan to take notes and share thoughts on time and technology over the next few months. We are especially interested in French philosophers such as Bernard Stiegler and Gilbert Simondon as well as non-academic thinkers.
We ordered some books that are related to the project. We plan to take notes and share thoughts on time and technology over the next few months. We are especially interested in French philosophers such as Bernard Stiegler and Gilbert Simondon as well as non-academic thinkers.
E Roon, Nick and I met on 4/21 3~6pm in 155 Rivington street, New York City.
LACMA Art + Technology Lab announced 5 grant recipients. We are delighted to be part of this initiative. Here are some press materials.