Time Announcements

2022, 2024

The idea for this project stems from how the act of checking the time, current temperature, or other observations might shift our experience and perceptions of temporality. In this work, participants are invited to record themselves saying the current time, environmental sounds, and any other observations they wish to include. These short audio recordings are gathered and added to the mix as they come in to the project; played as intermittent announcements in sync with the clock. The work runs day and night, and if two or more of the same times are sent in, they play simultaneously. As a child, I loved to call the speaking clock (0800 MSLTIME) and hear the three pips announcing each 10-second interval. There is a gap in duration whilst waiting for the third pip – between the “fact” of time and its experience. This project functions like a speaking clock with many voices, bringing moments of noticing into a repeating daily cycle.

In 2022, I installed the first iteration of this work with 14 participants from Tehran, San Francisco, Glasgow, London, Naarm, Moe (Gippsland), and Tāmaki Makaurau for EQUINOX_1:03PM NZST_23-9-22 at St Paul ST Gallery (now Te Wai Ngutu Kākā). In 2024, during RELAY at Te Uru Contemporary Gallery, I restaged the work with 31 contributing artists. In both versions of the work, participants responded with thoughtful and sometimes humorous recordings. I am interested in how this repetitive sonic reporting seemed to puncture the general flow of conversation and operated as simultaneously a call to (re)turn one’s attention to the exactness of the present (and to make observations of the time within) and an interruption of the experience of time as duration, a presentness in which the clock gives way to an experience of time as processual and flowing on.

Time Announcements 2024
Recordings submitted by RELAY participants, intermittent announcements.

10:15am
10:18am
11:38am
12:07pm
1:12pm
1:15pm
2:45pm
2:51pm
2:57pm
3:02pm
3:42pm
3:43pm
4:14pm
4:57pm
6:33pm
6:37pm
7:26pm
10:09pm

Time Announcements 2022
Recordings submitted by Equinox participants, intermittent announcements.

For Time Announcements, participants in the Equinox project recorded themselves announcing the time in the days surrounding the vernal equinox in September 2022. These announcements were then broadcast intermittently over speakers hidden in the ceiling throughout the duration of the exhibition.

7:30am
9:29am
10:02am
12:03pm
12:14pm
12:21pm
1:32pm
2:04pm
somewhere above the date line, neither Melbourne nore Auckland time
2:21pm
2:32pm
4:20pm
5:27pm
8:50pm

Equinox_1:03PM NZST_23-9-22
23rd September - 8th October
ST PAUL St Gallery
Equinox event 1:03pm (NZST) 23rd September
Opened 5pm 23rd September