Nonlocality, 2011

Exhibition. Clocks, photographs, diagrams and a dream.

The exhibition Nonlocality took place in two cities at the same time, with identical works in both places. Addressing how time and place are variables that change according to technological and scientific developments, the exhibition included clocks; double sided photographs; diagrams and a dream. As communication technologies are changing how we experience time and place, perhaps they are also changing our relationship to what is random and what is meaningful, amplifying a sense of synchronicity and of being in several places simultaneously through the countless random links that bind us together.

The pace of the dials in the clock Mean Time is contingent on global internet activity. The clock mechanism is controlled by a computer that continuously retrieves information about traffic online via pings to the biggest servers powering the internet, and, via hypothesis, registering the total traffic. When the traffic is high, the clock go fast, when traffic decreases the clock also slows down. Rather than representing time, the clock is guided by activity.

In the two diagrams Synchronicity in Psychology and Synchronization in Technology the terms synchronicity and synchronization are set up against each other. The graphs show statistics on how often these concepts have been used in two journals of technology and psychology since the 50s. Synchronization means creating concurrency, while synchronicity is the psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s concept of meaningful coincidence, a theory that there exists a non-causal but meaningful connection between events in the outer reality that seems to coincide with already existing inner feelings.

Parhelia/Bilocation is a picture with two fronts showing a photograph of a double sun. In the photo, a crystal is placed on the sun, a double-edge calcite, which polarizes the light and thus creates a double image. Bilocation is a term used for people or things that have the ability to be in two different places simultaneously. Parhelion is a meteorological phenomenon that makes you see double or multiple suns in the sky.

The outline of the dream, presented as a title on the list of works, narrated how I in a dream state could perceive the world according to the theories of quantum physics.

Produced with support from Arts Council Norway and the City of Bergen.