Podcast Transcript
Today is May 31st, 2019 and This is Episode 100, quite the milestone, so it couldn’t be more fitting that all week we are looking at time.
I for one can’t believe I’ve created 100 short podcasts on art, design, photography and looking.
It has been so much fun researching and creating these, and I look forward to creating many, many more.
Today seems the perfect occasion to dive further into time itself:
What is time?
Seriously, take a moment to ask yourself this question. Pause the podcast. Think about it. What do you think time is?
Some years ago, my daughter asked me this question and I had a really hard time answering it.
I think I came up with something like ‘something you need to be able to measure change’ - but that didn’t satisfy her at all.
Sure, you need it to measure change, but what IS it?
What is this magical measurement? What is its essence?
I couldn’t answer that. And to my relief, after some research, I found out that no one can.
There is no agreement on the nature of time. Just on how we measure and use it.
Isn’t it astonishing? We can’t really specify what this thing is that rules our lives.
But maybe we can show it.
Italian Artist Federico Pietrella is an artists whose works is built out of time. Literally.
He uses a date stamp and acrylic paint to masterfully ‘paint’ images of daily life.
People. Plants. Clouds.
It takes up to two months to create his paintings, and he changes the stamp every day he works on the painting.
When it is done, we have something amazing: an image portraying time itself.
His monochromes are mesmerising - once you zoom in they show you how, and when, the artist’s hand moved.
They show you time itself.
And I think we should love time, even if we feel we never have enough of it.
If everything stays exactly the same, if the hand of the clock doesn’t move, there is no time.
The desire to stop time then is futile - it’s a desire for nothing. For a complete vacuum.
Without time, there is no next.
No tomorrow.
No new podcast.
Tonight, I’ll use my time to celebrate - and I’ll be back on Monday with podcast 101, and a fresh theme.