VISUALIZING TIME

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We exist in the present, with every second becoming the past. The future remains unknown, revealing itself with each passing minute and hour. On a personal scale our lives are measured in days, weeks, months and years, and eventually come to an end. Time is a curious phenomenon. We cannot see it, slow it down or reverse it. As the saying goes, “time marches on.”

From billions and millions of years in geologic time, to thousands of years in anthropological time, to hundreds of years in historical time, elaborate schemes have been devised to measure time and organizing past events (forwards and backwards).

Photographs, documents, artifacts and other objects of time exist as proof of time past, assisting our memories. All histories, stories and memories are an editing and compressing of events in time. Time based media progresses in a linear sequence, giving a sense of cause and effect. Without this contrivance, we could not begin to make sense of past events and the world in which we live.