The nuts and bolts of real time

Clocks say different times round the world, because day and night shifts according to where you are on the globe, right? But how about a work of performance art that gives you the real time for your computer, right now, regardless of where you are – but made out of big planks of wood? See http://esquire.ru/clock and all will be explained. We found the video on a Russian site, and the English explanation was a bit baggy-sleeved, but here’s the gist of it.

The wacky idea came from Mark Formanek, who wound it up, so to speak, and set it going in the Berlin Sculpture Park. He had financial support from Datenstrudel, which sounds like something you enjoy with a cup of coffee, and created digital ‘clocks’ that are 4 metres tall and 12 metres from side to side, and change every minute.

The physical task of doing this took 70 workers, using 30 planks equipped with some quick way to fix them together. Over 24 hours of cunningly edited work, they swarmed up ladders to construct huge digital time-figures, say 9.26 or 14.52, from these planks. They made a total of 1611 changes, working continuously throughout the day. The video of the process is synchronized with the time at which your computer is configured, so for three minutes you’ll see the figures being changed to provide the precise time for your computer, wherever you happen to be. Ingenious, and very funny.
http://esquire.ru/clock