Category Archives: Further Education

Clocks and Time

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Time is weird, and clocks are all around us because of our relationship to time, calendars, that allow social meetings.

Today we got a historical gem on YouTube: the history of Big Ben. Many many men (women seem not to exist) have been involved in this UK project: all for a tower, a broken bell, and zillions of photographs taken by tourists ….. of a CLOCK.

Big ben had to send exact time to Greenwich. Why? Because of the Oº meridian and counting time zones from that line, but?

It sounds like “time” is much more complicated than “telling time” on your watch.

But what is time? Why is there a yesterday, a now and a tomorrow?
The channel Minute Physics tries to explain:

Time in relation to the 2nd law of thermo dynamics:

Or Ted-Ed gives another look:

And if you want to dig deeper: here’s the discovery channel take on time as it is seen and understood today. At this time, we are far from the Big Ben saga. Take a deep breath before diving into these new concepts!

Which brings us back to time for the individual born one day, dead another. Should we take care of the time given to us? Should we take care of our planet to give time to others? Should we give birth to other humans so that they too can have a life time? Should we allow ourselves to waste time if such a thing exists? Are these considerations important?

Thoughts on art

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I am starting this year on the topic of art, in the broad sense, thoughts that have come higgledy-piggledy to mind on this very rainy day when the dog is sleeping off a bath after playing in the mud this morning.

I’ll start off with a bust of Lenin, bang in the middle of Antarctica, presented by John Green in “the art assignment” YouTube channel.

Art you can’t get to:

Funnily enough I find that bust also kind of endearing, as a statue, as an object surviving storms and the cold; that is, not the person it represents, ie. Lenin. And I can think of other items one can’t get to. What of the flag left by the American astronauts on the moon? Is that art? or the lunar rover? Could that be art? And then there is all that art at the bottom of the sea, deposited there by shipwreck. There is also prehistoric paintings in caves waiting to be discovered or tombs of all kinds. Art deposited and left.

And then a structure by Ai Weiwei in Berlin. From 2016, this artist has taken to heart the plight of refugees arriving on the islands of Greece. Today of course the number of refugees from Syria have decreased because they are stopped from taking to the seas in Turkey, and also because the unrest in Syria has decreased for those citizens who are not labled as terrorists or dissidents of the regime. Refugees continue to arrive in Europe from Africa.
Here is a presentation of his life jacket (PFD) structure in Berlin, and another in Vienna. i have also linked to a video of a whole exhibition in Athens.

In Berlin:

In Vienna:

In Athens:

Ai Weiwei trying to understand the situation to be able to emphasize through art the refugee plight. This is a long documentary but worth the watching if the refugee problem interests you, or if political art is meaningful for you.

If you have got to the end of my new year musings, I hope you have two new ways of visualizing art work.

Note: higgledy-piggledy – late 16th century – rhyming jingle, probably with reference to the irregular herding together of pigs (New Oxford American Dictionary)