Tim Putt ITGM 705 Art Review 2: Contemporary Digital Artifact Professor David Meyers August 8, 2010 The Exquisite Clock is timepiece that uses imagery from around the world—pieces it together to reflects the current time. The intent of the creators was to connect time, play and visual aesthetics. The EC can be found online at exquisiteclock.org, downloaded as an App for the iPhone, used as a screensaver and seen in installation form and certain exhibitions. Each output uses imagery from the same database. The database has been predominantly generated by the viewers and other artists—as the whole goal is to have the viewer become a part of the artwork by submitting images. The project was created and developed by Joao Wilbert at FABRICA in 2008 with the Creative Direction of Andy Cameron.
Figure 1. Installation at Decode: Digital Design Sensations at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London from 8 December 2009 to 11 April 2010. “Exquisite Clock is a relational artwork where the boundaries between artist and author, producer and consumer are blurred. The Exquisite Clock invites you to participate in a global conversation about form, the limits of recognition and the poetics of the image, transforming a discussion of visual aesthetics into an exquisite game.”
This statement outlines the intentions of the developers at Fabrica. This “global conversation” is a theme that is common to their mission. Fabrica isn’t a school or an agency—it is instead a communication research center that was set up by Benetton in 1994 that is an applied creativity laboratory where young modern artists can come work on their projects in the full spectrum of communications from photography and film to music and design, publishing and the Internet. The “artist-experimenters” come together to create work