Experimental Clocks Visualize How We Percieve Time [NY Design Week 2012]
Joe Doucet's exhibit 'On Time' explores the notion of how we experience time, beyond counting seconds and minutes.
New York based designer Joe Doucet presented a new collection of objects in an exhibition called ‘On Time’ at Wanted Design 2012. Essentially a series of concept clocks, each of the pieces aims to challenge the way humans perceive time. In each of the pieces, Doucet married material exploration, craft, physics and storytelling in new ways.
One of the most contentious issues surrounding time is its effects on physical properties over the long term. What is perceived as character to one is viewed as degradation to another. The unfinished solid walnut cone will age and gain patina over the years, changing a little each day, just like ourselves. Similarly, the mirror at its base lets the user see how they change with time as well.
For centuries, the hourglass was used by man to define the passing of a specific time period. Oroborus loops in on itself to defy the finite aspect of the conventional hourglass and recognize time as an infinite concept.
When is a minute more than just 60 seconds? Through this mechanical device from an imagined past, which takes exactly one minute to complete its circuit, a minute can also become a pattern, a motion or a series of interconnected events that can have nothing at all to do with how we tell time.
While it’s true that every minute counts, there are more interesting ways of getting there than watching a second hand tick 60 times. Synk uses sub-bass frequencies within a liquid medium to intensify the ticking sound of a clock and create visible sound waves so that you not only see, but feel time tick away.