After being given our time 20:20 – 20:23 we discussed our initial reactions. We related the time to our personal experience. During this time we are usually relaxing, having eaten dinner. We thought it was a quiet and slow time, an in-between time – the evening is finishing and the night is beginning. We talked about the post dinner slump and how after a big meal you feel relaxed and drowsy. We used this as a starting point to reflect deeper on the perception of time and how it can be altered. When you are aware of time it becomes slower, when you reflect on it, in retrospect it feels fast. I don’t know if it’s just the brief and the people, but a group of 4 seems easier to work in than a 5, its easier to communicate and share ideas.
After leaving the group for the day I tried to research if there is any instance where the time is significant. I used my areas of interest such as Norse Mythology, Paganism to try and see if there was anything about this time period in this more spiritual and alternative sense. Katie in my group found out that you are more likely to say yes to things in the evening. We liked this area of psychology and hormonal responses to time. I researched a little further into this:
http://www.procato.com/biorhythm/
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/sections/sleep-and-circadian-rhythms
I had a quick look at this ted talk – “Time in the brain is subject to change”. whilst it’s interesting and helps spark thinking differently about our subject matter we couldn’t draw anything specific enough to our time 20:20 – 20:23. This was an ongoing thing to consider, it’s easy to get excited about something that reflects more the idea of 3 minutes as opposed to specifically 20:20 – 20:23. Moving forward… I began to think about our idea through experimentation. I created a quick graphic representation of 20:20 – 20:23. The blue square represents 24 hours, the tiny white one being 20:20 – 20:23. I used a grid to map out 24 hours with the positioning of the white cube being correct to this with the top of the left blue square being 12:01 pm.
As a group we looked at 20:20 – 20:23 on a watch face. We liked the angle and thought it looked like a gate-way. We read about how watch companies use certain times when advertising that supposedly look visually pleasing. We wondered how we could portray the two different times and also the 3 minutes in this graphic form. We made a cube which you could look through. One side we used the angle the watch made at 20:20 and the other at 20:23. It was interesting how the perspective became distorted when you put your eye to the box. It reminded me of pin hole cameras. Time becomes a shape. This led us to think about how to measure time in different ways we quickly brainstormed: through breaths, the sun rising and falling and media – songs, tv shows.
This led us to think about the video format. It’s an instantaneous capture of time. It makes it easy to record and document time in general. Running with this thought I told all my friends to set an alarm and film what they were doing at 20:20 – 20:23. Alongside these films which weren’t directed we thought we’d capture some video of locations that to us reflected the potentially slow nature of 20:20 – 20:23. We chose a restaurant, a bed room and a train station and agreed to all film a 3 minute video.
We tried to draw a commonality from the videos and see if there were any notable similarities or differences. Our time is quite vague and not having it’s own identity suits this. We almost have to engineer the identity of 20:20 – 20:23. Whilst this video format is just research more so than anything else I think the presentation method is interesting.
We began thinking about creating an abstract film from these videos edited an distorted overlaid with the clock face angles. We thought about how we could utilise sound to correspond or counter the video. Whilst this was interesting and I got really into it, having done a little bit in my foundation year and loving digital art, It’s probably not the right approach for this style of brief. We might come back to it. Zelda gave us a presentation on what kind of outcomes are derived from a project such as this. They were all really theatrical. I’m still thinking more about what I can gain from them.
We had an interesting idea as we were collating our thoughts for an interim crit. Based off the videos sent to us by our friends and our own experience we thought about the body language, posture and position of 20:20 – 20:23. Having previously looked at the angles of watch faces, we transferred that to the angles of posture and spine position. Below are some inital sketches of this idea can be seen in the bottom left corner. We thought it would be interesting to capture the inbetween nature of 20:20 – 20:23, one posture is slouched on your bed ringing your mum, one is getting an elbow in at a bar on a busy evening, or even the closing shutter of a shop. There was a nice typology to this idea. We created the sheet below with our train of thought which was to be presented in an interim crit.
Our feedback surprised me, it seemed unlike any of the other groups. Zelda and May both agreed 20:20 – 20:23 is a bit of a nothing time. Perhaps this is its whole identity. As such, a way to show 20:20 – 20:23 would be through subversion following the “think the opposite” philosophy Zelda talked to us about. I did manage to borrow a friend’s copy of Paul Arden’s “whatever you think think the opposite” and read it in the evening.
May suggested that through video we create a scary atmosphere etc and build up this feeling and then have a revelation that it’s only 8 o’clock. The atmosphere of this time is dependant of what time of the year it is, because obviously the sun has fully set during this time of year. 8:00 is also a common bedtime for little children so we can bring this idea into this. I’ve checked out a book on the technicalities of horror films.
We also got given the time based on the thinking, 20:20 is a ‘nothing time’ so where are places where you fell like time doesn’t exist. We thought about “time warps” such as the supermarket. However within this location the weird sensation you get happens in a greater amount when it’s really late and you’re alone in these places. Zelda thought the idea particularly fitted more with Ikea due in part to the atmosphere the shop creates. it’s actually quite interesting looking into store layout and consumer psychology; https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/articles/opinions-vary-on-ikea-store-maze-layout/
I thought a quote from this article about the atmosphere the layout of ikea creates could link nicely to our project “disorienting them and dissociating them from everyday life”. This is the feeling of a timewarp A group member told us about a psychological study where people in a cave were asked to record what time they thought it was. Here is an article about it: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/the-caves-of-forgotten-time/414894/
In response to this thinking method we agreed that we would try and guess when it was 20:20 – 20:23 without looking at the clock for the rest of the day. We were all 10, 20, 30 minutes out and whilst this is probably the case with any time guessing exercise, we weren’t actively looking at the clock. This inferred during this time, there is no reason to, it’s a time that you can afford to not be aware of its existence, a nothing time. We decided to capture this feeling we would have to go to Ikea. We planned to meet on Friday evening and head to the Ikea in Croydon. I booked out an audio recorder and camera from the loans room in preparation.
Cameron Aitken Graphic Design 