A New Day / A New Night (2021)
James Clar is an American visual artist who uses technology as a medium to critique the dissociative affects of technology itself.
James Clar, media art, lighting art, light art, pop art, interactive art, led art, minimal, installation, 3d cube, jamesclar, light and space, new media, American visual artist, medium, dissociative, disruptive technology, technology
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Category
Work

A New Day / A New Night

(2021)
Two Airport Terminal TVs, Mini-Computers, Custom Software
125cm x 72cm (each TV)

 

“A New Day / A New Night” consists of two airport terminal monitors and custom software. Each monitor displays the current time along with a city where the Sun is currently rising or setting. It tracks the position of the Sun as the Earth revolves around it, every minute displaying the next city that is transitioning from day to night, or night to day.

 

A list of 26,000 cities on Earth are parsed through a web-API that constantly updates the sunrise or sunset times for each city’s coordinates. These times are then adjusted for the timezone of the physical location of the artwork, allowing the viewer to follow the movement of the Sun as it travels the Earth from their position, seeing it move from one city to the next that is currently experiencing the transition between day and night.

 

[except from the exhibition essay written by former Guggenheim Curator Sara Raza]…Clar subverts the idea of connecting in the physical sense to explore ideas related to celestial or cosmic space, which is quantifiable by its own unique lunar cycle and rhythm. In the work ‘A New Day/ A New Night’ (2021) a multipart installation composed of television monitors, mini computers and custom software, Clar presents a clock that depicts a city in the globe where the Sun is either rising or conversely setting for every minute of the day. By employing the use of customized software the clock is able to accurately relay in actual time the rotation of the Earth around the Sun. ‘A New Day/ A New Night’ puts forward an alternative way of thinking about the governance of social, cultural and political conditions on Earth, which are heavily dictated by the opening times of global financial markets and centers of commerce.