Time: color

“Time: color” is an immersive installation that seeks to modify our experience of time through the conversion of hours into colors. The installation is part of a series of works in which I investigate the relationships between human notations and time, striving to modify how we understand time according to different parameters, among which the spatialization of time and the conversion between several of our ways to measure time. Mathematical time described by numbers or chromatic time, described by colors.

The installation is composed by 7 to 25 chromatic clocks, each set in a different GMT timezone. The clocks are disposed in a semicircle that can have a radius that varies from 2 meters (with an installation area of 4x2m and 5 clock) to 4 meters (with an installation area of 8x8m and 25 clocks). Each clock consists of a circuit based on Raspberry Pi running an authorial algorithm that I've developed to convert the hours into RGB colors. Since the clocks represent different timezones from GMT-12 to GMT+12, a whole day is simultaneously represented in the exhibition space.

Each clock advanced in its normal rhythm throughout the day, which means that its color is constantly being modified to represent current time in each of those timezones. Hours, minutes and seconds are converted into RGB colors using a set of sine functions with a period of 24 hours. This means that, every 24 hours, each color traverses the whole chromatic spectrum (and therefore each clock does the same). At midnight, blue gets to its highest intensity, becoming the predominant color at that time. Twelve hours later, blue gets to its lowest intensity, at a time when the addition of green and red – therefore yellow – predominate. Each sine function is offset by 8 hours, which means that green is the most intense color at 8am and red at 4pm.

“Time: color” converts time into colors and promotes the immersion of its visitors in a spatial experience of time, provoking us to question the codes and notations we consider axiomatic and to experience time as a moderator of our spatial experience.