Four Kinds of Time: Using Brush, Camera, Copier and Computer

Four Kinds of Time: Using Brush, Camera, Copier and Computer Editorial I. When one chooses an instrument for creating art, whether a brush, a camera, a copier or a computer, one is actually choosing a vehicle for time travel, for artists’ tools are communication tools and communication tools are as much a means of transportingus in space and time as are horses, trains, airplanes or rockets. As we are transported in space and time our perceptions arealtered, for each move-from horse to train to airplane to rocket-changes our vantage point and our capacity for understanding our place in space and time. So too do our communication tools act as vehicles for changing our perceptions of space and time [11. Each vehicleof transportation and communication has builtin limitations and possibilities for moving us in time and space. When we ride a horse, we move in a space somewhat larger and at a pace somewhat faster than if we travel by foot. If we ride by train, we expand our space significantly and can cover a continent in days. By plane we can cover several continents in hours, and by rocket we can move to other planets in the time it once took to go from city to city. When we use a brush, we are using a communication tool that is comparable to walking or riding a horse. The camera is a tool akin to train travel. The copier was invented in the era of the airplane. The computer, with an adaptation of the copier attached to it as a printer, is part of the rocket age. As scientists apply energy in new waysto move our bodies and goods through space and time, so they, along with artists, apply energy in new ways to move information through space and time. With each new spacehime voyage our experiences are altered. New possibilities emerge and old ones disappear. 11. To bring this discussion to a practical level I would like to share four experiences I had with four different modes of space/time travel in the last four decades. In the process I hope to reveal how different modes of space/time travel give rise to new experiences and to the disappearance of old experiences. In the 1950s,in Yangmingshan Park in Taipei, Taiwan, I sat one day on a bench surrounded by people. I had a drawing sketchbook and conte crayon in hand and was drawing the observers (Fig. 1)[2]. None of the other people weredrawing: all wereobservers.The drawingstook from 5to 25minutes to create. Each drawing was as vivid an impression as I could sketch in that amount of time. The atmosphere in the small group was warm and cosy. We were a tight-knit group of observers and creator. AdaptedfromoriginalEnglishversionofSoniaLandySheridan,“Cuatromodosde tiempo: el us0 del pincel,la chara, la fotocopiadora y el ordenado”,originally publishedinPROCESSOS,exh.cat.Copyright0 1986by NovatexEdicionesand Ministerio de Cultura, Explanada 16, 28040 Madrid, Spain. Reprinted by permission. Once or twice I handed a small drawing to a child or a parent. When I did this I had no remaining physical record of that drawing for myself. But the audience’srolewasprimarily that of observers, and I kept the book of drawings, for the most part, intact. The experience was warm, friendly, slow and noninteractive. It was like taking a stroll in the park, observing all the tiny details of plant and animal life. A decade later in the 1960sI was once again in Taiwan. This time industrial pollution covered the endless new low-rise cement buildings. The streetswerepacked with vehiclesof every sort and every era. I had a camera, and it felt good to be able to snatch an image here and there as throngs of people surged by. Sometimesthepeople did not seemto seeme. If they did, they looked uncomfortable-as though I were taking something from them. I went into a small village. There the reaction was mixed. People gathered, but at a distance. A few screamed and ran away. I was told later that they feared having their image captured in a box. Fig. 1. Sonia Sheridan, Taiwan Childre, conte crayon, 9 X 12 in, 1959. Sketchbookdrawing,Taipei,Taiwan [2]. @ 1988EAST PergamonPressplc...