Locality of Time
Mori, Keiko
For this project, I selected one section of a book, Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, which is about Locality of Time.
20 June 1905
"In this world, time is a local phenomenon. Two clocks close together tick at nearly the same rate. But clocks separated by distance tick at different rates, the farther apart the more out of step. What holds true for clocks holds true also for the rate of hartbeats, the pace of inhales and exhales, the movement of wind in tall grass. In this world, time flows at different speeds in different locations..."
"On occasion, a traveler will venture from one city to another. Is he perplexed? What took seconds in Berne might take hours in Fribourg, or days in Lucerne. In the time for a leaf to fall in one place, a flower could bloom in another. In the duration of a thunderclap in one place, two people could fall in love in another..."
"Only when the traveler communicates with the city of departure does he realize he has entered a new domain of time..."
"This world of the locality of time, this world of isolation yields a rich variety of life..."
I am setting my interactive narrative on "Locality of Time" to be taking place in a simple room. In this room, there is a moving image projected on each wall to indicate different locations. The time-flow of each location is different from the rest changes according to the viewerÍs location in the room. The closer the viewer is to one wall, the bigger the projected image on the wall becomes and the closer the time-flow of the location becomes to real time. This shift in size and time-flow allows the viewer to experience that he/she is entering to one location. If the user looked at other walls, the user would see the local time-flow of the locations.