FABRICA’S EXQUISITE CLOCK FOR THE FIRST TIME IN BRAZIL - 19 Nov/15 Dec 2010

Treviso, November 2010. On November 19th 2010 the Exquisite Clock by Joao Wilbert/Fabrica will be presented for the first time in Brazil, the home country of its author, as part of the exhibition ‘Gambiologos: Collective Exhibition on Kludging in a Digital Era’ at the Centoequatro Space in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Gambiologos is an independent program of VIVO ARTE.MOV - INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ART IN MOBILE MEDIA, a collective show that features a selection of physical objects and experimental media systems that stimulate interaction in alternative ways.

Exquisite Clock is a clock made of numbers taken from everyday life – seen, captured and uploaded by people from all over the world. The project connects time, play and visual aesthetics. It’s about creativity, collaboration and exchange.

The clock is based on the idea that time is everywhere and that people can share their vision of time. Through the Exquisite Clock iPhone app and the website www.exquisiteclock.org, users are invited to collect and upload images of numbers that can be found in different contexts around them – objects, surfaces, landscapes, cables… anything that has a resemblance to a number.

The Exquisite Clock has an online database of numbers – an exquisite database – at its core. This supplies the website, iPhone applications and interconnected installations. The principle is that all instances of the Exquisite Clock access the single exquisite database forming a conversant network made by different perceptions of time. As people use their iPhones to photograph numbers, they are changing the website and all installations in real time. The same happens with the website uploads. The platform was designed for a real time response that displays the most recent uploaded numbers at the very moment they are uploaded: picture of a 3 taken with an iPhone in London is being visualized in the seconds of an Exquisite Clock installation in Brazil.

The physical design for the installations consists in reviving and re-using old and obsolete technology. The installations are exquisite corpses, made by screens, cables and circuitry patched together in a work of art where raw technology is part of the aesthetics.

In accordance with the concept of technological kludging that inspires the Brazilian event, the Exquisite Clock presented in Belo Horizonte will be a new physical installation created and assembled at the exhibition space using local sourced obsolete technology. Prior to the exhibition, dumped cables, unused monitors and old computers are going to be searched, collected and become sources for a new clock display built from found bits and pieces. The kludgist version of Exquisite Clock will be then plugged to the Exquisite network and become another gateway in which time can be shared.

VIVO ARTE.MOV is a further stop in the Clock's international journey through exhibitions and events, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum's Decode: Digital Design Sensations in London (Dec 2009-Apr 2010), which featured a major survey of the best contemporary digital art and design from around the world; Decode has furthermore started a worldwide tour and is now at CAFA Art Museum Beijing (19th October-21st November 2010). Exquisite Clock was also featured at the Imaginaires exhibition at the New Museum in New York as well as at the Milan International Furniture Fair.

Exquisite Clock was developed at Fabrica by Joao Wilbert. Fabrica is Benetton's research centre on communication, launched in 1994 with the aim of uniting culture and industry. Fabrica invites young artists/designers from around the world to spend a year at the research centre based in Treviso, Italy, where they can acquire further expertise. They are offered a wealth of resources and contacts, and expert guidance, enabling them to develop cultural and social communication projects in the fields of design, visual communication, photography, interaction, video, music, publishing.

www.exquisiteclock.org
www.exquisiteapp.org
www.fabrica.it

For more information:
Fabrica Press Office
+39 0422 516272
mliverot@benetton.it
 

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