Looking at the Looking Clock

This paper addresses the moment of looking at a clock, our experience and subsequent cognitive conclusions as we wrestle to keep in time. In the moment of telling the time the author suggests that we struggle to adjust our sense of time ('Lived Time') to catch up with the clocks time ('Universal Time'), as if we are working harder than the clock. The author uses this exploration of Ricoeur's dialectic to introduce an artwork entitled the Looking Clock. A modified analogue clock that only reveals the time and continues working when a person is looking at it. Once a person moves away from it, then the clocks movement stops immediately. However, as soon as another person looks at it, it restarts and quickly catches up with real time. The paper proposes that the Looking Clock reconciles our apparent submission to one model of time and in particular provides an alternative for the clock as the device that delivers us into the future.