Time in Media

This project rotates around different conceptions of time. Time seems to be a common sense concept that we are familiar with in ordering our schedules and day to day existence. In fact there are many different concepts of time and ways that it is expressed. The project will start with a conceptual exploration of these different ideas of time, drawing on physics, philosophy, anthropology, media theory and technology.
These different conceptions will include the dimensional time related to movement and space, entropic time - the tendency of things to disorder that establishes the direction of time, the anthropological concept of pre-modern circular time based on endless cycles, the two greek conceptions of time as chronos (the time of the watch), and kairos, the time of happenings and interactions, indigenous conceptions of time, feminist time theories, and lastly the technologies of operational time, meridia, time zones and the time international standards, atomic clocks and bureaucratic co-ordination.
The project will address the relationship between time and distance and attempts to overcome it, to use it, to make it graspable, visible and understandable; this involves the geographical notion of distance as well as virtual distances.
With this conceptual background, strong conceptual questions or hypothesis' focussing on the interplay of distance, time and movement in media are to be formulated and explored. Possible practical outcomes include (but are not limited to) games, interactive installations, online services, physical artefacts and performances using light, sound, music, photography and chance, under-clocking and over-clocking in computing, building an atomic clock etc.
A live context for potential projects is a participatory artwork 'Local Time' being developed by Julian Priest for the 'Local Knowledge' exhibition at the Dowse in Wellington in December in which a new time zone will be created that is driven by an environmental sensor network and co-ordinated with network time protocol.
Towards the end of the semester (i.e. Nov) a number of media theory students at the University of Bremen, Germany, will be available and interested in collaboration; this could at least be a test run of the final work (e.g. online game or service).

Time in Media

Julian Priest, Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath. Time in Media, Studio Project, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, 2011, Semester 2.