Structure and Time

In a work of time-based art, something happens. The work takes place in time because time is one of its parts. (Even those works which, for conceptual or other reasons, just keep going on without change are using time because our experience of the event changes over time. And so the something happening is happening in us.

Think about time today. Make a time based unit of art in which something happens.

SOME QUESTIONS:
What does it take to make something happen?
What's the tiniest thing that can happen and still have it be perceivable that something happens?
What's the most that can happen in the smallest amount of time?
What happens to the way we experience something happening if you distort the way time works?

Think about your own project as you work, if you can.

RESOURCES:

1. The 4 (or 5) frames exercise we used in Deathbed Edition. Divide an event up into 4 or 5 frames. Draw it like a comic strip. There are 4-5 "moments" and, if we experience them one at a time, we see that something happens.

2. Consider Ad Reinhardt's comics (I'm thinking of the multi-panel ones, but they're all great. Tina, I hope you know his work as a painter.

3. Take any story you know (a fable, a kids' book, a novel, a Shakespeare play) and represent it in 5 still images that you draw, enact, find on the internet.

4. Watch any movie by Buster Keaton. (Sherlock, Jr. is my favorite.)

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