Slice of Time
Milano Design Week 2017
An installation for the Italian luxury watchmaker Panerai.
First a design was made of a transparent “empty-shell” like clock that offers condensed characteristics of the Panerai brand, which consists of hour markers using one-stroke numerals and square-shaped cases. The design was then elongated to a 16m length using the extrusion molding process. A clock was then manually made by slicing this “empty-shell clock” piece by piece, turning them into a finished product for the visitors to take home. Clocks of various proportions were created naturally since the “ages” of the visitors were converted into “millimetres”. A circular atelier space was set up for each production stage such as “polishing”, “sandblasting” and “assembling”. The gradual formation of the clock while these spaces engaged and interlocked bore a resemblance to a “gearwheel of a watch”.The clock is created at a pace of one every 5 minutes. The long and narrow “empty-shell like clock” becomes shorter, by being sliced one by one, over the duration of the exhibition, and the installation is complete when it disappears. In other words, the” empty-shell like clock” is an apparatus that enables time to be perceived like an hourglass.
By reducing “time” to “length” which is similar to “selling time by measure”, people can experience time, and what is more can “take back their own time”.
