Between life and the afterlife rests a conflict of our own making. Unable to accept any broader possibilities of existences beyond our own, we construct boundaries, both here on Earth and for what lies ahead.

With this installation, I have attempted to recreate Heidegger’s suggestion that there was never a time when humans did not exist, not because we are eternal, but because we are the creators of time.

Steam Clock is a chaos generator – an uncontrolled system that is confined within a time-space contraption that questions our need for immediacy while desiring eternity. Through its mesmerising antics, viewers experience time standing still while waiting for the machine to tell the time.

As if in battle with inevitability, Steam Clock will attempt to display the time as a convoluted binary code. To tell the time, count the puffs of steam in each frame. The frames represent the clock-face numbers 12, 4 and 8 while the first four steam puffs represent the positioning of the hour hand and the fifth puff the minute hand – this happens every twenty minutes, for example:

2:40am/pm = 12.12.4.4.8
4:20am/pm = 4.4.4.4.4
12:00am/pm = 4.4.8.8.12

Time. Our most rigid unstoppable. Steam Clock, 2023 is a remodelling of Steam Clock, 2020. My ’20 version questioned our need for immediacy while desiring eternity. ’23 takes time and places it in the now. The steam creates fractal-like shapes and movement as it displays the time every fifteen minutes, within plus or minus fifteen seconds.
To tell the time, observe the puffs of steam exiting the holes that represent 12, 3, 6, and 9 on a clock face.

Installation: Arduino microcomputer, electronic control components, hardware, confined spaces and fluids.
Dimensions: Variable