Early seafarers would tell time by holding up a hand toward the sun. Each finger between the sun and the horizon represented fifteen minutes until sunset. Fast-forward to the late nineteenth century and the invention of “standard” time zones in which it can be six o'clock simultaneously in Bar Harbor, Maine, and Columbus, Ohio. Joe McKay's Big Time, the latest offering in BAMPFA's online gallery, asks what is the next step in our evolving relationship with time. Big Time is an Internet artwork and downloadable iPhone app that uses GPS to measure your precise distance from the prime meridian and tell you what time it is-for you. The time may be different for someone across town. The tongue-in-cheek Big Time critiques the techno-positivism that emanates from Silicon Valley, where micro-payments, targeted marketing, myThisorThat, and iEverything reduce the world to a series of bite-sized “personalized” experiences. But, rather than attempting to turn back the clock, Big Time uses the latest technology to reestablish time as a close relationship between the sun, the earth, and your body. This world premiere presentation of Big Time is practical: you will experience true noon-no matter where you are, the sun will be directly overhead at 12 o'clock. Big Time also facilitates our understanding of Einstein's theory of general relativity. As an artwork, Big Time is never wholly manifest, but instead contingent on our bodies' motion in space and our ongoing negotiations with one another. It is a social sculpture that allows us to reengage with time, a social construct so primary that it has become invisible.
