NEIGHBOR

202401
Design aluminium/LED display structure for this 019-Ghent project!

019-ghent.org: "NEIGHBOR is a light structure consisting of 8 ‘digits’, like those used to display time on a digital clock. NEIGHBOR appears on the eastern facade of the building, facing the Handelsdok. It is visible from the quay across the water, where new apartment buildings, schools and parks appear. 019 invites artists and writers to create a work for this display. They use the light structure to program textual interventions at regular intervals, or work with the limitations of the digits to create a visual contribution. In doing so, NEIGHBOR welcomes a wide range of contributions – from visual poetry, to digital art, to disruptive indications of time. By installing a seemingly “matter-of-fact” lighting intervention 019 mirrors time indications that can already be found as light sources in public space. NEIGHBOR explores how such elements can also be poetic and subversive by employing them in improper ways.

For its first appearance, during the 2024 Ghent Light Festival, NEIGHBOR displays symmetrical notations of time in hh:mm:ss. Every 24 hours, there are 44 symmetrical moments, numerical palindromes, each one a second in duration. 02:52:50.10:25:01. 20:11:05. Etc. Between such symmetrical seconds (the remaining 86.356 seconds in a day), the clock alternates between displaying the previous symmetrical second and the upcoming one. Rather than showing the actual time, this clock mirrors itself and shows the limits of the moment we’re in, while the water’s surface reflects superfluous time. As the clock alternates between 02:25:50 and 02:52:50, the dock alternates between 05:52:20 and 05:25:20."

Concept: 019-ghent.
Pictures: Michiel De Cleene.