Klokkemakeren

Denne klokka er den største desimal klokka i verdi.
Den måler 75 cm i alle retningar og står på ein 2,5 m høg påle inne på Det humanistiske fakultet ved Universitetet i Bergen.

Legg merket til den spesielle skiva:
Då den franske revolusjon var gjennomført, blei ein del nye standardar innført. Vi fekk definert lengden på ein meter, tyngden på ein kilogram lodd, flatestorleik osb.
Men allereie i Oktober 1793 blei desimal tid definert og det bygger på ti-tall systemet: døgeret fekk 10 desimal-timer, timen fekk 100 desimal-minuttar, og minuttet 100 desimal-sekunder.
Klokka 10 var midnatt og klokka 5 var midt på dagen.

September 1794 blei dette systemet offisielt, men det blei ikkje ein suksess, så i april 1795 blei prosjektet lagt ned.
Difor må vi i dag fortsatt slite med det Sexagesimale tallsystemet som har 60 som grunntall.

Oppdragsgivar er KORO,
klokka er teikna av Toril Johannessen,
urverket er produsert av Smith of Derby,
og trevirke rundt klokkekassen og pålen er laga av Djupevåg Båtbyggeri AS Norheimsund

Title: Historical Time
Credits:
Artist: Toril Johannessen
Commissioned by Public Art Norway (KORO)
Location: Faculty of Humanities, University of Bergen

The decimal clock will be part of a public art work commissioned by Public Art Norway (KORO) for the University of Bergen. The clock will be a permanent installation in the courtyard at the Faculty of Humanities. The project will also include a series of pictures (graphs and diagrams) to be installed in public areas of the building.
The project addresses the concept of time and its cultural history. My intention is to stimulate imagination and curiosity around the concept of time and evoke critical thinking on how history and perceptions of time are embedded in the professional fields that are being studied and researched at the faculty.

Fields studied at the faculty such as language, history and philosophy, as well as politics, religion, economy and technological development, influence how time is measured and perceived. Through modern history, as an example, synchronization and standardization have turned time from being many local times to one global time divided in time zones.

Along with the concept of time, the notion of revolution has been central for my research leading up to this project, and in particular the French Revolution and the striving for abandoning the old and reinstall new standards in all domains. Hence, the notion of making new standards by conventions is closely linked to the idea of the revolution. This will be addressed in some of the pictures and diagrams for the project.

Historically, the standardization of the metric system in the Western world was a part of the changes following the French Revolution, and the widespread use of this system for measurements of length, weight, volume etc. is thus a result of the revolution (by a convention of 1795). An attempt to make it the new standard of time measurements were made at the time but eventually the standardization did not go through on this point. Metric clocks were only in use in France for a short period in 1794/1795 (Also to be mentioned, a metric system for time measurement was in use in China long ago). A revolutionary metric calendar was in use for a period during the French Revolution, and at the end of the 19th century a new attempt to introduce the metric system as time unit was led by the French mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré, as a part of the international work on the coordination of global time. Eventually, the idea was dismissed.

The word revolution has several meanings and has changed throughout history: in the context of the clock it can understood as a direct reference to the French revolutionary clock and calendar; the word revolution might mean rotation or a cycle or it can be understood in the sense of social change. Student revolts is another association to the word, the context of the university taken into account. Moreover, revolutions have different objectives - while the French Revolution was about subversion and revolt, the aim of English Revolution was to turn back to tradition.

Convention may mean treaty, common practice or agreement. It is sometimes used negatively about something that is "conventional" in the sense that it is stiff, set or outdated. In view of that, the concepts of "revolution" and "conventions" can be seen as opposites where one refers to a process of change while the other refers to a standstill. However, to make way for new ideas and a new order (via a revolution), it seems necessary to have to come to a new consensus (via conventions). I find that there is an interesting tension between these concepts in the context of the University where the relationship between conventional (taught) knowledge and new ideas are continuously negotiated.

International conventions (in the meaning of treaties) were crucial for the global synchronization of time at the end of the 19th century. The synchronization project was particularly motivated by need for accurate maps for overseas shipping and for coordination of rail networks. While global time became more and more fine-tuned throughout the 20th century, time perception changed simultaneously on another level, namely in theoretical physics, through the general acceptance of Einstein's relativity theory.

These associations are some of the things that have inspired my project. I have had in mind that it touches upon knowledge and history that is potentially available and discussed at the faculty, although the work is not supposed to be a history lesson in itself. The clock in the atrium will not refer to the French Revolution directly through design or other references, but will stand for itself, while the diagrams will carry references that can be associated to the ideas discussed above.