“TEMPOGRAMME”
32 hours, 47 minutes e 53 seconds. The inner perception of time
© Ivan Cangelosi, 2023
80 X 80 cm
Ink on paper
Technique – Handwriting of abstracts of the book “Time, the stuff life is made of” by Stefan Klein.
In this work I tried to graphically depict the subjective perception of the flow of time. Contrary to its objective flow, i.e. measured, and which is always the same (e.g. 1 hour of day X has exactly the same length of 1 hour of day Y), the inner perception of time is not uniform. It is perceived in a different way, more or less fast, in relation to the events that occur in a given time and that involve us in some way.
To better clarify this concept, it is usuful to quote Albert Einstein who, speaking of the relativity of time, once said: ” When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity”.
This painting was created using 24 colors/shades. They ideally represent the 24 hours that make up a day. The colored vertical spaces, created through handwriting, correspond exactly to 1 timed hour of writing. To complete the painting it took 32 hours, 47 minutes and 53 seconds of writing.
As is evident from a careful look, the vertical spaces, despite all being the result of 1 timed hour of writing, have different dimensions from each other. This is precisely the purpose of this work: to demonstrate graphically that the perception that each of us has of the flowing of time is a fact made up of subjective variables.