Horizon (narrative clock – webcams)
(Rotterdam / Wilhelminakade 701)
The work of artists’ duo Jon Thomson (1969, Great Britain) and Alison Craighead (1971, Great Britain) primarily focuses on ‘live networks’ like the Internet. It looks into the question of how these networks have changed and shaped our world. Horizon is a ‘narrative clock’ that is composed of live images from webcams installed in various time zones across the world. This results in a series of images that are constantly being updated. In a sense, it reminds us of storyboards of films or even of an unusual electronic sundial. Horizon pairs motifs such as the passing of time with the perception of (urban) landscape in which the horizon is the only constant. The images underline the effects of light and dark (day and night) and the changing seasons. Thus Horizon gives a contemporary expression to a classical theme within landscape art. The artists present a landscape as it may be lived today. The landscape, after all, can be watched at all times and places via the computer screen.