Time Crystals

6m Video projection onto stone, wood The nature of time itself was a concept that St Augustine of Hippo grappled with in his philosophical texts sixteen centuries ago and is still perplexing us today; namely, how to equate the subjective experience of time with an objective understanding. This work builds on an interest in the mystery of time viewed across human, cosmological and quantum scales. The video piece installed alongside St. Augustine's tower’s ancient clock makes reference to the scientific theory of time crystals; a model which proposes a structure that repeats in time, as well as in space. Patterns employed within the film mirror the crystal structure of the mineral beryl, commonly used to fashion the original reading stones used by monks to help failing eyesight. Variations in perspective are manipulated through the speeding up, slowing down and overlapping of events to deconstruct a linear flow of time and interrogate the methods by which humans measure and experience this phenomenon.