Time-Sand

• Responsive Environment
• 2009

Table-top micro-world with responsive time-lapse video and sound. Time-Sand is a microcosm with its own space-time dynamics. Visitors are invited to manipulate a miniature landscape, altering the flows of water, light, and even time. Perturbations start waves that gush and bleed, revealing the past and slowing time in a manner like kicking up dust on the sea-floor or dripping ink on thick, porous paper.

Time-Sand is based on an architectural model of the soil-remediation of a potential site for a park along the Lachine Canal in Montreal. Architecture student Gregory Beck Rubin recorded his water experiments over two months, which were used to create a time-lapse video that was projected back onto the model.