Chasing the Sun: Restoring Evolving Understandings of Geological Time
Description
This paper presents a multi-year project which uses imagery of extinct plants and eco-friendly homes by women architects, from every time zone, to produce three outcomes: an upcoming multi-channel installation of animations using live data to create an indoor sundial in the artificial lung at Biosphere 2 at the University of Arizona; a mobile app that plays looping animations every time the sun sets across the western edge of a time zone; and a series of prints and NFTs to raise money for The International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA) at Virginia Tech. Although plants and women architects is an unusual pairing, this gut-level choice emerges from frustration with the historically low percentage of women in digital art and male-dominated social media companies distracting from social change. At the New Media Caucus 2026 Symposium at Arizona State, pending acceptance, the project’s animations will be displayed on either the MIX Center’s DAK Exterior Video Wall or its Interior Display Wall as pre-recorded generative animations that will align with world time. My strong preference is the exterior display, not only because the animation’s internal structure, divided by vertical bands, echoes the building’s architecture, but also the animations shift from daytime to silhouetted objects at sunset. Those visuals would be extraordinary against the actual, everchanging Phoenix landscape. This paper reviews related artists examining time and provides an overview of this project’s prototypes and projects to seek likeminded partners.
Artists