Meantime in Greenwich is an innovative public art project by media artist David Clark being officially unveiled Monday, August 6 in Sir Sanford Fleming Park.
The project is a nonlinear audio narrative and augmented reality experience presented through a series of interactive sundials distributed throughout the park. Park visitors will be able to download a free app onto their digital device and an audio story will begin to play when they approach a sundial. For iPhone users, the exhibition includes a virtual reality component.
“We place a little browser in the program and if you aim your camera at the surface of the sundial there’s an icon there that will trigger a 3D object on your screen,” says Clark, chair of the media arts department at NSCAD and designer of Meantime in Greenwich. “Each sundial becomes a pedestal for virtual reality. Everybody becomes their own cinema.”
The project was commissioned by the city to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Dingle.
Of especial relevance to this project is the park's namesake. “Sir Sanford Fleming is the guy who got the world to coordinate all their clocks,” explains Clark.
“What he did was wean us away from solar time—he developed the 24 time zones,” Clark says. “I thought an ironic monument to him would be to place 24 sundials across the park.”
“Sir Sanford Fleming changed the way we think of time in a way that has been reverberating for the last 100 years, especially as we get into a more media-based culture.”
But according to Clark, the core of his work remains “finding engaging ways to tell new stories.”
“I think what‘s really exciting is that there are so many layers to it,” says Siobhan Wiggans, community arts programmer for HRM. She describes the art project as approachable—making history relevant to citizens today.
“Hopefully we’ll engage new audiences in this work,” says Wiggans. “My dream is that youth will take out their parents and grandparents”
The project will be officially launched during the Dingle Day Natal Party in Sir Sanford Fleming Park, on August 6. An opening reception will be held from 11am-2pm. The exhibition runs until September 2013.
Artist David Clark will be on-hand for the event. In his words: "Come for the augmented reality, stay for the park.”
