An ambient media installation using real-time weather data to evoke a sense of global interconnectedness.

About

Keeping Time is an ambient media installation in which five flickering lights hang suspended over small LCD panels. The flicker rate of each light corresponds to the temperature report for one city, which changes periodically as planes land at Dublin Airport. The LCD panels indicate which city is represented for each light.

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 — a sweetly optimistic reminder of the physical processes which increasingly bring people closer together.

Process

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. From the global (the broad network of airplane routes and hubs) to the local (the node at Dublin Airport), each light becomes a real-time index of distant place.

Achievements

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