On the primary level the ambition of the Fractal Clock(s) project is very simple: to make interventions of beauty in the shared, public, environment, with which people may form a relationship, over time, both individually and collectively. The basic principle (to disperse a familiar geometric pattern, moving and playing in time and space) is easily graspable and accessible and offers the possibility of an intuitive joy within the perceptual game, and has this in common with the history of anamorphic art.

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On a secondary level, the conceptual thinking beneath this simplicity has some complexity and depth. This is rooted in a series of conversations with Professor Richard Taylor, begun in 2010, to whom the video postcards (in PROCESS) are addressed. The Taylor Group (Oregon, USA) investigates the nature, reception and application of fractal patterns (the ‘geometry of nature’ where self-similar patterns recur at different scales). This research has led to practical benefits (from improved retinal implants to more efficient solar panels) and has also identified (and measured) a common pleasure experienced, psychologically and physiologically, from the perception of such patterns, which recur repeatedly not just in nature, but in artistic expression across cultures and time. Their apprehension appears to relieve stress, as if we are re-seeing something that we ‘know’ and appreciate at an intuitive level. To date, ‘fractal art’ has tended to be two dimensional, graphic, and fixed. This begged the question, what if it became spatial, temporal, fluid and environmental, to be perceived and experienced on a more corporeal level, as is more common in nature and daily life? Might that be positive in some way? It seemed like a reasonable challenge to find out.

Beneath this dimension of curiosity, there is a considered (if understated) social, cultural and political stance supporting the work. If the universe is held together by one common factor it is, perhaps, time/space/rhythm. We all swim in the same ocean of space and time and, essentially, these are one ‘thing’. Generally, our time pieces, again, tend to be two-dimensional and graphic, whereas time has further dimensions which, individually and collectively, we also share, inhabit and ‘know’. The Fractal Clock is intended to be a light, quiet presence, rewarding some attention rather than demanding or commanding it, but it is a presence which ‘tells’ time in a way that may have some fullness, or truth. If the individual rotations of each element are consistent, it would be possible, in principle, to learn to tell the time from alignments of geometry rather than numbers or dials. Similarly, one could recognise time from the patterns of sound, corresponding to movement, without even looking. Time becomes a four dimensional dance to music, and perhaps that’s what it is, wherever and whenever we ‘are’. However, whilst we may all swim in the same sea, our relationship with time/space/rhythm may be different, personally and culturally. Since the ‘clock’s’ control is digital, the information may be quickly shared. The possibility then arises for one clock, moving and singing to the rhythms of Nairobi might (perhaps for one day) accompany, or completely change, the movement and rhythm of the one in Copenhagen, or Cardiff, or Singapore. This is the final concern and concept of the work – for the specific and local to connect, aesthetically, with the general and global, with some reciprocal outcome or gain.

RD 2012