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Old Meets New in Dutch Digital Wooden Clock

by Amar Toor on December 21, 2009 at 09:20 AM


The defining feature of any train station is usually its clock. Complacently watching over rushing passengers as they watch it, a station's clock sits apart, above the masses, like an aristocrat in another century. In the Netherlands, though, land of wooden shoes, an artist and his minions decided to topple this horological hierarchy once and for all, and finally assert control over a clock in Rotterdam.

"Standard Time" is an installation art piece constructed by Mark Formanek, and as you can see in the video below, it requires a lot of work. Formanek's crew of 70 assistants manually change the time every minute, on the minute, by hurriedly re-arranging the wooden planks that make up the digital display. Exhausting work, no doubt, but we think the end result is worth it. Not only is the work cool-looking, it also opens doorways of thought and discussion about things like human control over technology, and how we constantly construct and reconstruct retro aesthetics by incorporating antiquated designs into a modern, hyper-digitized context. Besides, at the very least, it's a lot less creepy than one of those weird, Disney-like animated clocks you'll come across everywhere else in Europe. [From: Neatorama]

Tags: art, clock

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