| Timestamp is an interactive installation that documents and captures moments, grafting time and space together with a simple gesture. It uses strategically placed webcams in the Long March Space to render visitors' low-resolution images into the artwork itself. Pictures are automatically collected once every minute from the webcams and are sent to a printer suspended in the middle of the project space. The low-fidelity images are etched onto thermal paper with a time and date stamp and then spit out into the air, allowing the picture to float gently down to the floor. The burning of the image onto the paper is reminiscent of scratching one's name into fresh cement, or cutting notches into a tree trunk; acts that leave a mark, an impression, a simple statement of “I was here.” Over the course of the exhibition, this evidence of presence accumulates in the project space and creates a tangible record of people and events that passed through. Visitors literally leave their mark on the work, and become a part of the evolving non-linear narrative that remains. |
