Standard Time

Mark Formanek's performance art installation titled Standard Time is quite intriguing. His idea for this large work, reminiscent of the face of a digital clock, came to life in Berlin in 2007 with the help of Datenstrudel. The piece has been exhibited many times around Europe and has been documented on film which is now available on DVD and even as a desktop application for you computer. The work itself is a series of wooden planks that are placed together to make up the numbers of a digital clock. The work also consists of a performance by 30 or so workers who change the position of the wooden planks every minute so that they read the correct time.

I think that the whole idea behind performance art is the 4th dimension of time. I enjoyed watching the Standard Time video because it is not stagnant. It is constantly changing and being worked on which makes it interesting. The viewer not only focuses on the wood numbers themselves but on the movements of the workers and how they assemble and disassemble each wood form.

Another artist who deals with similar concepts relating to time is Maarten Baas. His works, most notably Real Time, all have an apparent relationship to the idea of time passing.

See more photos and videos on the Standard Time website.
Video #1

Video #2

(See original core77 post here.)