It’s Time For …

an interactive installation designed for the 3rd International Conference on Time Perspective, August 15-19, 2016, Copenhagen, Denmark

Interactive Installation “It’s Time For …” explores personalized time perspectives. The installation takes its essence from the real life problems observed related to time experience, which are based on the standardization of time perspective regardless of personal differences, the social pressure as a result of this standardization, and unhappiness and inefficiency caused by the social pressure. As a reaction to this reality, the installation presents an approach that accepts differences when it comes to time perspectives. It suggests a game that makes it possible to state your personalized time perspective and moreover share it with other participants actively in two levels: First level is just simply sharing and presenting your perspective, the second level is by encouraging other participants to try another perspective.

The installation consists of 24 pieces of time slot cards placed on wall space or standing boards and 500 pieces of time cards placed by the boards in a presentation box. The installation is open to anyone to interact with. The only requirement is to be in a playful mood and have a cell phone. Each player gest a time card, writes down an activity he / she wants to do and the time for that activity. For example, the player writes “listening to Nina Simone” and then on the empty clock on the time card he / she draws the time 4 p.m. Then, on the back of the card, he / she writes down his / her details like name, age, gender, profession, country of residence, nationality, and phone number. Among these, name and phone number are crucial if the player wants to go further in the game. The rest of the data can / will be used for analysis to see how time perspectives differ and if we can spot some patterns. Then, he / she sticks the time card on the board in the time slot assigned, in this case 4 p.m. time slot. As the installation designers, during each time slot, we will send text messages to a participant chosen randomly from the installation with a suggestion from another participant. If we continue the example, when it is 4 p.m. we will pick a participant and send him / her the time perspective “it’s time for listening to Nina Simone”. The player who gets the message is free to try and share this time perspective with someone else. We will have an official hashtag like “#itstimefor” on instagram and/or twitter where the participants can share their experiences. The purpose of the installation is to challenge the standardization of time perspectives. To do so, it creates a democratic environment for expression of individual time perspectives and to encourage others’ to try another perspective hence to empathy with others.

The installation relates to a variety of fields. First of all it creates an aesthetic experience thus is an art / design project. Through the installation a variety of data will be created that relates to human behavior, psychology, cultural studies, social sciences, gender studies. It is an experiment that can help us design any product / service ranging from clocks to calendars, school or work systems.

Thus our submission statement is; in order to create a more emphatic society free from social pressure that is based on unrealistic normal allowing self expression and to create happier and efficient individuals, our installation will solve standardization in time experience problem of anyone with a different feeling from the societies’ norms in regards to time experience by giving them a platform to raise the issue, express, share, and provoke.