Project Brief

For the class 'Time', I had to create a 2-D visual composition of my perception of the entire temporal experience. The final piece could be analogue or digital. The 2D project could include multiple elements (drawings, photographs) within it.

Design Process

The time I spend during the night seems elastic, stretching for hours before I go to sleep. This is especially true when I am sketching; I lose myself whilst doodling in a sketchbook. I wanted to capture the timeless stillness of the night as it defied all logical forms of time-keeping.

To achieve this, I mapped the passage of time by making an intricate sketch. The sketch filled with clusters of tiny buildings was based on a photograph taken in South France. The mindless creation process let me immerse myself in the minutiae of the art.

For the first draft of my project, I took pictures of the painting at the end of the day. I then noted down the amount of time I spent on the project. Tracking the time in this methodical way helped me understand that I spent more time on it than I initially realised. However, this process didn't work; I was capturing the elasticity of time by mapping it to the second. By using a pre-determined, rationalised method of tracking, nighttime lost its intangible feeling.

Learning from that attempt, my second pass at the project involved tracking time with every stroke. After finishing the line art, I used ink to add some depth, texture and foliage. Every time the brush was dipped in ink or water, I painted a line across a sheet. This simple series of lines, resembling a tally sheet, captured my time and effort.

Reflection

This project was a foreboding one. I finished it in February 2020, a month before the pandemic pushed me back home to India. What followed was the familiar tale of online classes and zoom meetups. An unintended consequence of this was my flipped schedules. Nights and days blurred as I woke up, bleary-eyed, to attend my 5 am classes. The simple elasticity of time described in the early drafts of my project was heightened. Now, I look back at the project with increased admiration; the warping and shape-shifting nature of time still resonating in this upturned world.