H.O / 2004 / Japan Itineran interactive art installation

Perfect Time explores the ephemeral but constant passage of time that we are unable to make tangibly comprehensible, what Henri Bergson called “duration”. The installation demands active involvement on the part of the visitor, who scoops sand into a device inspired by the hourglass. Time is depicted as illusory imagery projected onto the trickling sandscreen curtain. The impression is thereby given that one can reach out and touch it. If the visitor does so, however, the image on the curtain vanishes, and all that remains is the scattered sand.

Perfect Time makes the visitor an interface between virtuality and reality which others observe from behind a series of projection screens. The current user’s silhouette can be seen embedded in the moving images that continue to be emitted around it. In this way, interaction with one’s own temporal duration becomes visible, but only to others as an illusion in motion.