The Time Machine: A Multiscreen Generative Video Artwork

'The Time Machine' is a multi-screen, high-performance, generative video art installation based around multiple low cost computer platforms. Using algorithmic selection of palindromic loops of time-lapse video the work contrasts the external, machine perception of time with our internal, phenomenological experience of it. The video feeds, recorded from around the world, tick and tock backward and forward creating a polyrhythmic, 12 screen time-piece. The images loop back and forth on each screen of the installation, creating a large polyrhythmic clock of high definition, full colour motion. Each screen detailing a passage of time from around the world, captured, frozen, forward and reverse. The time-lapse loops slowly switch, selected from over a thousand separate pieces by generative algorithms on each host computer. Creating a Time Machine reflecting the world, gently rocking back and forth with a myriad of sub-cadences, confronting the viewer with the unanswerable challenge of comprehending time.