No Present, No Past, No Future is an exploration into understanding our perception of time. Using the Tibetan singing bowl, No Present, No Past, No Future attempts to visualize how the bowl observes and records time. It recognizes that our perception of time is a close examination of our existence – realizing that we, like time, are evolving or devolving towards nothingness.
The Tidal Observation Instrument starts with four tides. It uses historical data from the International Oceanographic Commission to log those tides as wavetables, and allows an instrumentalist to control the speed of the signal, from the native tidal frequency of 0.0000016Hz up to a more typical Low-Frequency Oscillator range of 0.01Hz. This LFO is allowed to modulate a sample of the waveform playing at 440Hz (Concert A). As the four tides play, it's possible to hear the last several days of tides across the globe resonate with each other, leading towards a strange new metaphor for the waves.
This clock is inspired by The Order Of Time by Carlo Rovelli, who theorizes that time as we usually imagine it only exists because of a “blurred macroscopic perspective of the world that we encounter as human beings [and that] the distinction between past and future is tied to this blurring and would disappear if we were able to see the microscopic molecular activity of the world.” Along with the thought that humans create time itself, we are tying in quantum mechanics and the idea that nothing exists in a determinate state until an interaction occurs or a measurement is taken. In our clock, the time is indeterminate and blurred until we measure (by looking at the clock) which causes an exact time to be visible.
This year was so special. Standing at the end of 2020 and looking back, COVID was THE topic that no one could ignore. Study remotely and being alone changed the experience of studying in ITP. However, this special experience triggered my inspiration for making something of this topic. Two projects were made with the idea of During Quarantine. One is called New York Sunrise. I made a Sun of the real-time in New York. Due to the time difference, a lot of classes were given at midnight in Beijing. So I was thinking about making another Sun for myself. The other is the Life Cell. It is an interactive light installation that has several light 'cells'. Each cell will light up when audiences get closer to it and reveal a person's life in the cell. When the light inside is off, the audience can see nothing but a blank light shade. We want to use the interaction, getting closer, to express how people long to be connected with others during the quarantine.