AT THE SAME TIME
At The Same Time is a portrait of an entire day in Los Angeles, which takes place while we are going about our day’s work, chores, commute, play, and sleep. I spent several days and nights photographing the Los Angeles sky capturing one frame every 15 minutes, resulting in 96 moments of atmospheric time, each measuring 1 foot wide by 10 feet high, composed of thousands of very small glass mosaic tiles.
Winter days are precious to Angelinos, as it’s when we receive most of our much-needed rainfall and the city comes to life in the aroma and colors of spring. For the mural, I chose to depict one day in early March when the typically blue skies are scattered with clouds—from the low, puffy layers of the ‘Stratocumulus Clouds,’ to the layers of bread rolls of the ‘Altocumullus Clouds,’ the regularly spaced cloudlets, often rippled ‘Cirrocumulus Clouds,’ and the delicate cloud streaks of the ‘Cirrus Clouds.’ All these cloud formations and more may be present in one single day in Los Angeles. A Los Angeles cloud-rich sky reminds us of the value of water, as well highlights our good fortune of living on a land enriched by sheer eternal sunshine.
It brings to mind the writer Albert Camus, who grew-up dirt poor in the French colony of Algiers. Upon moving to Paris he observed that the people of the North were much poorer than he had ever been on the Mediterranean coast, as there at least he always had the sun, the sea and the open blue sky. Los Angeles is rich in the same way, with on average 186 days of full sunshine a year, and 106 days with partial sunshine, for a total of 292 days. Seventy-three percent of a year’s daylight time, the sun reaches the ground in downtown. The sky and the sun in Los Angeles are both great unifying forces, infusing a certain relaxed Southern Californian style in its people, as well as act as equalizers, whose light and warmth caress everyone.
As the passengers enter the Metro Station and walk through the corridor toward the elevator to the light rail, they are entering into a zone where abstract time, as invented by humans, dominates; all that matters on the platform is the arrival and departure time of the train and whether we’ll make it to our destination on time.
One of the oldest human inventions is the clock—‘rationally measuring time intervals.’ Water clocks, along with the sundials, were possibly the first time-measuring instruments. Our modern lives are tightly organized around the clock, yet our bodies relate to and are influenced by natural time—night/day/twilight (dusk/dawn)—differently. As the passengers descend to or ascend from the platform they are greeted by a field of harmonious tones of blue, that announce a more natural rhythm to our daily grind.
At The Same Time can be understood as a ‘sensate’ or emotional timepiece, serving as a peaceful respite in our busy day of commute, inspiring us to bring together our mind and body as we experience, if just for a moment, the fullness of time expressed in the sky above us.
The artwork also investigates aspects of color perception. Since blue light is at the short wavelength end of the visible spectrum, it is more strongly scattered in the atmosphere than long wavelength red light. The result is that the human eye perceives blue when looking toward parts of the sky other than the sun.
Working with local artisans, the mural is ‘painted’ with the smallest of glass tiles in multiple tones of blues, greys and whites, in order to achieve the subtleties of the clouds and the vitality of the blue sky in a mosaic to contemplate. The irregular surface of the glass tiles will respond to the station’s light by mimicking the natural shimmering effect the stars and the sun create when they interact with the atmosphere and our perception. Each stone freezes and celebrates a moment of every day.
Winter days are precious to Angelinos, as it’s when we receive most of our much-needed rainfall and the city comes to life in the aroma and colors of spring. For the mural, I chose to depict one day in early March when the typically blue skies are scattered with clouds—from the low, puffy layers of the ‘Stratocumulus Clouds,’ to the layers of bread rolls of the ‘Altocumullus Clouds,’ the regularly spaced cloudlets, often rippled ‘Cirrocumulus Clouds,’ and the delicate cloud streaks of the ‘Cirrus Clouds.’ All these cloud formations and more may be present in one single day in Los Angeles. A Los Angeles cloud-rich sky reminds us of the value of water, as well highlights our good fortune of living on a land enriched by sheer eternal sunshine.
It brings to mind the writer Albert Camus, who grew-up dirt poor in the French colony of Algiers. Upon moving to Paris he observed that the people of the North were much poorer than he had ever been on the Mediterranean coast, as there at least he always had the sun, the sea and the open blue sky. Los Angeles is rich in the same way, with on average 186 days of full sunshine a year, and 106 days with partial sunshine, for a total of 292 days. Seventy-three percent of a year’s daylight time, the sun reaches the ground in downtown. The sky and the sun in Los Angeles are both great unifying forces, infusing a certain relaxed Southern Californian style in its people, as well as act as equalizers, whose light and warmth caress everyone.
As the passengers enter the Metro Station and walk through the corridor toward the elevator to the light rail, they are entering into a zone where abstract time, as invented by humans, dominates; all that matters on the platform is the arrival and departure time of the train and whether we’ll make it to our destination on time.
One of the oldest human inventions is the clock—‘rationally measuring time intervals.’ Water clocks, along with the sundials, were possibly the first time-measuring instruments. Our modern lives are tightly organized around the clock, yet our bodies relate to and are influenced by natural time—night/day/twilight (dusk/dawn)—differently. As the passengers descend to or ascend from the platform they are greeted by a field of harmonious tones of blue, that announce a more natural rhythm to our daily grind.
At The Same Time can be understood as a ‘sensate’ or emotional timepiece, serving as a peaceful respite in our busy day of commute, inspiring us to bring together our mind and body as we experience, if just for a moment, the fullness of time expressed in the sky above us.
The artwork also investigates aspects of color perception. Since blue light is at the short wavelength end of the visible spectrum, it is more strongly scattered in the atmosphere than long wavelength red light. The result is that the human eye perceives blue when looking toward parts of the sky other than the sun.
Working with local artisans, the mural is ‘painted’ with the smallest of glass tiles in multiple tones of blues, greys and whites, in order to achieve the subtleties of the clouds and the vitality of the blue sky in a mosaic to contemplate. The irregular surface of the glass tiles will respond to the station’s light by mimicking the natural shimmering effect the stars and the sun create when they interact with the atmosphere and our perception. Each stone freezes and celebrates a moment of every day.
