As Groucho Marx put it, “Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped”.
The owner of a Sculptura knows that time is passing – in some respects, what more is there to know? That is distilling Time into its purest essence and we seem to have consensus that a machine need only exhibit or deal with the purest essence of its purpose in order to fulfil its function. In that sense, the Sculptura serves as a modern ‘memento mori’, a wonderful, quirky concept steeped in a rich tradition all of its own.
(Then…
…and now):
The ‘reductio ad minimum’ design of Mr Haldimann’s machine underscores the impertinence of man attempting to stamp his dominion over an infinite concept or, rather, a concept with infinite possibilities. What did the dinosaurs care for 60 unit divisions of 60 unit divisions? They just needed to know when one ice-age ended and the next began: a thermometer could have told them that. What does it matter how long this Earth takes to go around its Sun when you’re looking at it from inside a black hole? Whose watch will mark off the time it takes for light to arrive from Beta Centauri? (OK, OK, all you guys with the Lange moonphase can wipe that grin off your face right now!).
This machine, though, does not presume to partition time, only to mark it passing much in the fashion of that eternal symbol sometimes called the ‘Wheel of Life’; Samsara; Bhavacakra. Here’s an early design for the central tourbillon:
J
Ironically, the picture of the Sculptura was included in the original post as a possible example of a watch that pretends to the function of a machine for marking the passage of time, but which (however beautiful) does not. It is now clear that nothing could be further from the truth.
Cheers,
pplater.
(p.s. Thomas, all wives are psychic: they know we are wrong before we even open our mouths).