Concept:

We are still dancing between two concepts (which can be interrelated and combined into one):

(a) Time

Time in a sense is a construct of human species. In earlier days, people often perceived time in relation to agriculture, like the seasons with when to harvest, and the rising and falling of the sun with starting to farm and going back to home and rest. Later, with the invention of clock and emerging industrialization, our perception of time changed. The amount of hours one works is linked to their wages, and one’s work can be very strict around time - a strict time for check-ins, time for meeting, time for classes, deadlines, etc. I remembered feeling a bit off and weird like missing something the first few days no longer wearing a watch anymore… We are so used to human, clock time.

Yet, what does time mean in nature? Still a ticking clock? How does time manifest in nature? How do nature “perceive” time, if any, and how is it different from or in relation to how we perceive time? …

Instead of a calendar or ticking clock, in nature, a ginkgo leaf turns yellow and grows ginkgos in fall, maybe falls in a cold winter, and sprouts again in spring. Some plants only live for a year, others live for centuries. A river flows and flows and flows, gradually into the ocean, some evaporating into the air. A tree grows rings yearly. A snake and a cicada sheds their skin. With time, a fruit and a vegetable can ferment, can turn sour, with so many bacterias living, breathing – though many are often forgotten in human eyes. With time, we “decompose”. Change is happening all the time, whether we sense it or not.

• If we see sands falling, maybe we associate it with hourglasses representing time passing by. Yet in nature, it can also just be sands falling.
• time in our body. Eg. aging, 生物钟…
• not sure if this is enough related to “art and anthropocene”.
• “We are always shedding skin cells — millions of them a day. But because skin cells are microscopic and it's a continual process, it isn't very noticeable.”

(b) Desertification

Making

• We now plan to have several half-hourglasses hanging on a structure from the ceiling. The hourglass only has the top half of it, and the materials within can fall down into the air. The hourglass can have different shapes, made of different materials (eg. paper mache, cloth, weaved grass, strings, cardboard, lotus leaves, _______ ; If we need it waterproof, we can consider eg. applying wax to the surface).
  • With different containers and fillings, they fall at different speeds.
  • Some liquid escapes, and the rest dries in the container (eg. cement)?
  • Dyed with ice and some natural colors.
  • Do we catch the leaking stuff in some ways or leave it on the ground? Falling drops create a picture on the paper on the ground?
  • Hang leaves of different colors & decayed leaves under each hourglasses?
  • When all things within falls off from the hourglass, something remaining in the hourglass reveals sth?
  • The hourglass - transparent or not?
  • What fills the hourglass can be liquid and/or solid (eg. a combination of rocks and sand, waterish mud, leaf snippets _____________ )
• Besides the half-hourglass shape, another option is like several strings holding a piece of cloth. Marcela shows us another work this reminds her of: ______.
• We might use light or projection or sound (eg. ticking clock sound??)
• Questions: