Keeping Time (2002)

“Keeping Time” is an ambient media installation, which uses real-time weather data to evoke a sense of global interconnectedness. Five flickering lights hang suspended over small LCD (liquid crystal display) panels. The flicker rate of each light corresponds to the temperature report for one city, which changes periodically as planes land at Dublin Airport. “Keeping Time” retrieves the first five planes scheduled to land at Dublin Airport, determines which city they are arriving from, and logs the weather data for that city. The LCD panels indicate which city is represented for each light. “Keeping Time” allows visitors of the Digital Hub to tune into the relationships between the global and the local, experiencing a sense of unity as external processes are harnessed into an intimate reflection of increasing interdependencies.

Inspired by the global movement of people and large scale networks of transportation and travel Keeping Time is a personal welcome to the city of Dublin from one of its newest inhabitants. From the global (the broad network of airplane routes and hubs) to the local (the node at dublin airport) Keeping Time provides a sweetly optimistic remimder of the physical processes which increasingly bring people closer together.

Keeping Time was installed as part of Exhibit 1 @ The Digital Hub in Dublin, Ireland.
January 6th – March 3rd 2003

RECOIL was inspired by dense urban environments and the micro-spaces people occupy during daily travel. Small, powerful magnets are embedded into everyday clothing, causing unexpected and sometimes uncomfortable physical connections between people and objects in the city.

Accelerated living within urban environments cause many people to close themselves off to unexpected encounters and minute details in the environment. So much emphasis is placed on easier seamless integration of schedules and personal movement. (In New York City subways people stand shoulder-to-shoulder during rush hour, faces buried in the newspaper, or staring blankly unfocused at adverts.) Recoil introduces an element of unpredictability and challenges the wearer’s personal body space by making unsolicited connections in unexpected, uncomfortable, and possibly inappropriate ways.

Powerful magnets have the ability to erase data contained in many memory devices (example: credit cards) With Recoil; the wearer creates a data-free zone, which also acts as a form of data terrorism. (Imagine emerging from a throng of people to find that your office swipe-card no longer works? – would you be able to find the perpetrator if they were wearing RECOIL?) These garments can also serve to heighten awareness in the wearer and others as to the high penetration of digital technologies into our everyday lives and reasserts awareness of bodily presence in the environment.