Modern Times

2017
Manuel Abendroth, Jerome Decock, Els Vermang

​

Size: variable

Technique: analogue clock, digital clock

 

When in 1340 Jacobo Dondi gave the clock its form, he shaped more than a visualisation of time: he created an image of the world. With its circular and cyclic finitude, it represents the universe as a mechanism and establishes one of the strongest icons of the Renaissance world. In 1970, the digital clock replaces the watch hand and its dial with a linear display. By placing the analogue and the digital clock next to each other, the artwork ‘Modern Times’ creates a tautology of the notion of time with their corresponding circular and linear world view.