plans of futility

ticker-tape machine

With an auto-feeder so that the tape passes through the machine at a steady rate. Thus the tape machine records the steady passing of 'real' time and produces a continuous hard copy of the progressively increasing past. The room will eventually fill up with the useless evidence of the passing of time.

end of time

Using a reel to reel movie camera. After the film, the tape pulls loose from the first reel and flicks against the second each time the reel makes a complete revolution. The sound of the loose end of tape flicking steadily and the projection of a blank white yet active or potentially active space being the most important elements. The scophophilic sensation still exists to a certain degree but the film is over, the story has been told, the life has ended and the experience is of the nothingness that exists afterwards.

timed drawings

Set a time limit for each drawing, in proportion to the size of the desired drawing, and label each blank sheet with the time at which that drawing is to be executed. The pile of blanks can then be slowly reduced to a pile of drawings that are a record of the activity that took place on the date, time and place that is labeled. In this way, it does not matter what the drawings are or how good they are, they are still the evidence or the remains of a few specific moments of activity and they are probably all that remains of those moments.

mundane existence

A whole day of detailed notes on the activities of a single person. The notes should include every single insignificant action, every twitch, every conversation. Everything that the person does or experiences in that day should be recorded. A complete catalogue of a single person's existence for a single day.

completed - see mundane existence

flick book

Using the space-time drawings, fill in the gaps to transform the lines so that a movement from left to right is achieved and a movement into different planes. The quality of line could gradually be changed and then the nature and behaviour of the line might change accordingly. The beginning and the end should be 'flatliners'.

repetitive actions

Several cinefilm recordings of unproductive repeated actions, each projected as a small square in a line of squares. The whole row of projections represents the futility of existence in the uselessness of those individual actions. Each life plays itself out separately, amongst the others but oblivious of them.

time warp

Three simultaneous projections of a strong movement such as somebody running from one edge of the 'screen' to the other, projected space (top left) and travels at a certain speed across that space. After a pause that is relative to the speed of the movement across that space, it appears in the next screen but moves across that in slow motion, as though time behaved differently in that space. The final space would have yet another speed for the object to move at.

real-time wave

A projection of a huge wave (in the scientific 'amplified' understanding of the word 'wave') several feet long that, at first is inactive. Ideally this would be achieved by projecting an image from a computer which is linked to a microphone or an amplifier. In this way, the wave could depict the sounds that occur within the room in which it is being projected - in real time.

the absurdity of categorisation

An index-size card filing cabinet or single drawer. Inside, thousands of single sheets of paper each with a line of different nature drawn on it. These are filed in certain categories that describe the character of the line: its curvature or angles, its deviation from the center, its density, its change-ability in any of the above, etc.