Laurie Frick: data art
sleep | quantified-self | time
Wood blocks, tacks, leather on wall and canvas primed panels, 9’ x 14’. 14 days of time-use tracking, color coded by activity.
Wood blocks, tacks, leather on wall and canvas primed panels, 9’ x 14’. 14 days of time-use tracking, color coded by activity.
Wood blocks, tacks, leather on wall and canvas primed panels, 9’ x 14’. 14 days of time-use tracking, color coded by activity.
Laser etched paper, wood blocks, tacks, leather on panel, 12” x 16”. Description of color codes and diagram of 14 days layout.
Legend on laseretched 16″ x 12″ panel.
Messy little drawing of the 14 days of time tracking I used to make the installation. Just as background info for you.
Leather, wood, and aluminum 48” x 50”. Time-use data of a man age 37 over 7 days. 2015
Leather, wood, and aluminum 48” x 50”. Time-use data of a man age 37 over 7 days. 2015
Leather, wood, and aluminum 48” x 50”. Time-use data of a man age 37 over 7 days. 2015
Leather, wood, and aluminum 48” x 50”. Time-use data of a woman age 32 over 7 days. 2015
Leather, wood, and aluminum 48” x 50”. Time-use data of a woman age 32 over 7 days. 2015
Leather, wood, and aluminum 48” x 50”. Time-use data of a woman age 32 over 7 days. 2015
7 days decoded (this is the decoder ring) for a man age 37. Vertical time use over 7 days, and legend for color categories.
7 days decoded (this is the decoder ring) for a woman age 32. Vertical time use over 7 days, and legend for color categories.
"Some days it’s scary how many hours I spent online when I thought I was making stuff in the studio all day. Imagine everything else that tracks your time…. your car knows when you drove it, your credit card, the MTA pass, a security swipe at work, your front door probably knows when you walked into your apartment lobby last night.
Time is measured, and we are so close to knowing exactly how we spend every minute of it. If we are what we do, will tracking time help me understand who I am? Would we recognize the physical pattern of our time and activities? Rather than worry about being tracked, I relish the notion that soon we will collect every possible bit of data about us, I think it’s the secret to understanding who we are.
Time is sequential, ordered and related to what comes just before or after. It’s the one thing we have that is pretty-much free and simultaneously valuable. Even though we don’t let ourselves think about it….time for each of us is finite. Do we agonize, procrastinate or consciously think about how we spend our time? We make split-second decisions about what we do now, next and then after that…how we spend our time must be a reflection of our basic nature.
After scrolling thru Amazon unlimited looking at hundreds and hundreds of books on time management, I asked a friend how there could possibly be so many books published on getting control of your time. And the friend blankly looked at me and said “because people feel bad about how they spend their time”.
Which is all very curious because I’m investigating the notion that YOU are your time, you are defined by how you spend your time, the activities and even unconscious use of time says loads about your psyche, your personality and your inner-self. Your sense of who you are is based on the recollection of recent events, and what you are doing and intend to do. It’s your basic orientation in the world."
Top: 14 days in a continuous squiggle pattern, trying to capture the stretchiness and squishiness of time. Some days have tons more activity than others, and time zips by. And one day was so problematic it literally fell apart. 2015 installation at Pavel Zoubok gallery in New York.
Bottom: 7 days of time tracking from the Time-Use survey, color coded by activity and quantity of time spent, of one man, 37, and one woman, 32