Flower of Time: Electro-mechanical Installation (2016) was presented at Loops-Layers-Lines, a new media exhibition by researchers in Digital Culture Studio, Culture lab, Newcastle University on 18 March 2016.
Materials
Laser cut acrylic, Arduino Uno, servo motors, Adafruit 12 channel servo driver, screws, wires and fishing line.
Concept
Flower of Time: Electro-mechanical Installation (2016) is a mechanical version of the previous work TimeFlower (2013), which explores the aesthetic potential in the visualisation of time.
Flower of Time: Electro-mechanical Installation (2016) is an information mapping mechanism that translates the current time readings into correspondant pattern and colours. It aims to inherit the ‘performance-like’ setting that was embodied in the automata of wonder in 16th to 18th Century Europe. Flower of Time: Electro-mechanical Installation is an assemblage of four mechanical layers, which separately indicate the reading of day, hour, minute and second. The ‘layer of second’ is the closest to the audience and ticks every second, while the farthest ‘layer of day’ ticks once a day. Every tick changes the size of the mechanism. In terms of the layer of seconds, the shape expands outward from the minimum to the maximum as the second goes from 0 to 30, and otherwise shrinks back while goes from 30 to 59. The same concept of circle is applied to all four layers.
Each layer also has a correspondant colour hue that is correspondant to the time readings. I map the time readings into colour hues according to their sharing circularity. In terms of hours that goes from 1 to 24, the colour hue goes from red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta and back to red. The same mapping technique is applied to all four layers. The whole structure is assembled with transparent acrylic for the audience to see through all layers. Based on this mapping approach, the work represents each second in the year with a unique colour and formation.
In addition to the ‘Clock Ticking Mode’, Flower of Time: Electro-mechanical Installation also has ‘Performance Mode’ that triggers in every few minutes. In ‘Performance Mode’, the mechanism rhythmically and dynamically transforms its shape and colours. The ‘Performance Mode’ lasts one minute before goes back to ‘Clock Ticking Mode’. Different ‘Performance Mode’ indicates different minute readings.
This experimental practice is part of my PhD research, which is a material exploration of my speculation of ‘21st Century Wundermaschinen’. It explores several family-resemblance characteristics of canonical Wundermaschinen through emerging ways of making. In particular, it materializes the quality of ‘information-oriented visual complexity’, ‘rarity and refined labour’, and embodies ‘multiple epochal technology’.