Theme:
Time as material
Context:
Time is usually been treated as a measuring unit to calculate days and life. As a material, time is unpredictable. We experience time, but we cannot catch time. Without time we never exist. Time travel is a common conceptual theme in fiction movies. Are the past me and the current me same individual?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXuP2_BCmV0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_paradox
https://www.space.com/21675-time-travel.html
The technique of animation smears is used to exhibit a fast movement of a character or an object. Just like motion blur in a film, When something moves quickly, the camera could not capture the action clearly due to the limited frames per second. Animators extend this feature applying in animation, which can effectively enhance the fluency of a character's movement. Meanwhile, it reduces the number of frames, which decreases the cost of animation. The object moves faster, the smear stretch longer. It makes me wonder what if the speed of a character's movement exceeds the speed of light or any unit of measure, we may not be able to see him. So does he still exist?
Method:
Time as a material can be applied in a variety of forms. I created a clock that the second arm moves slower than the normal one, which reflects the timeline in the universe. When the clock was broken, time would be separated into multiple dimension. Like the star-shaped solid, the track in the different timeline could be distinctive. What we saw is just one projection among the multiple timelines.
Response:
I was struggling with the concept for several days. The first thing I thought was a clock. The famous artwork The Persistence of Memory, painting by Salvador Dali, creates a melted world with permanent time. What if time actually exists, can it be affected physically? So I intended to tear the clock like cloth.