Standard Time

http://www.standard-time.com/index2_en.php

Hybrid art incorporates various approaches to media art while using a multitude of mediums to express it.  I analyzed an artwork of Mark Formanek called “Standard Time.”  In his video, Formanek documents 70 workers building a wooden 4 x 12 m digital time display in real time.  This involves 1611 changes within a 24 hour period.  When I began to watch Standard Time, I was confused as to what was going on.  There were blocks of wood and many construction workers with ladders going in and out of the shot. I thought I was viewing the construction of a building (like the ones featured in the background of the shot).  As I continued to watch I realized the blocks were forming numbers—these men were constructing a “digital” clock. 

What fascinates me about this hybrid art is that the viewer (myself) is watching time being constructed.  I am not concerned about the present time in the slightest, or how it is passing as I watch this video; only about how these construction workers are spending their time and energy on simply displaying the time on a clock that has essentially already passed.  Or has it?  “This film is much more than just the recording of an action, or the recording of something that has taken place in the past; it is also a clock,” Formanek said.  “A clock for use right now and in the future which, as each day goes by, extends further into the past, but is still up-to-date and punctual.”  This leads me to believe that no matter how much time passes, there is still work to be done in the present and we must keep moving forward.  We work and we live like clockwork.

            The construction workers are fighting against the clock, minute by minute, in order to make sure their time stays accurate.  Yet they are also working for the clock, basing the entire project on what the clock reads.  In order for the project to succeed, each minute must be constructed promptly and perfectly.  If the construction workers were to fall behind, would the project fail?  Would the men even realize that they have fallen behind in the midst of constructing their own time?  The concept itself makes me wonder whether it is possible to fail at such a thing.