TimeDreams is an interactive web art/software art work conceptualized and designed by artist and designer Miikka Poutiainen. The project group also includes Wesa Aapro and artist Kalle Jarva. The work deals with the personal time of its users in mediated and technology driven everyday life. In the work the user travels through the “surrealistic” visual and auditive world by completing tasks and experiencing flowing animations. In the work user gets feedback about his/her relationship on time. The work has been supported by AVEK ( Finnish Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture) and Medialaboratory of University of Art and Design Helsinki.

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The starting point for this work has been the examination of how one understands one's own time space. How do people see their own personal time in relation to a given time culture they are existing and influenced by? A culmination point in the working process of this work was slight but menacing accident that happened to me. Two girls were blindly hurrying into a bus and were hit by a car. It started me thinking. What is it in our time culture that drives us to risk our life just because of saving a few minutes? Or how the other stories, where parents just don't have time to get their sick child from the nursery, aren't so surprising to anyone?

Time is one of the most important parameters in modern life. Clocks, calendars and beeping synchronizers direct our moves self-assertively day by day. Incessantly and graciously they shows us where and how to be. Despite the pervasive nature of time it is a real mystery and phenomena that has many paradoxical layers. At the same time when we have more free time than ever before many of us feel busier and more stressed than ever. On the other hand some of the old populations who live close to nature don't even have word for describing "the time". Their relationship to "time" is simple. Natures circulation itself tells where and how to be. It has been said that nothing in nature points out a need for dividing the day into 24 equal part, parts into 60 zones and these zones even smaller sections.

Technologies, networks and messages that travel at the speed of the light through our consciousness are about to challenge our perception of both time and space. French philosopher Paul Virilio describes the resulting timeless and omnipresent place as a meta city, omnipol, which is created inside the networks. Its centre is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Simplified logic goes that the faster the speed, the wider would be the consequences.

Today technology, media and even chemical innovations ease life and work but at the same time they have potential to squeeze "human time" into a mere part of a tightly connected system. On the other hand, in order to work and adapt, any system requires natural human flexibility. It has been paradoxically said that "more we try to save time and make it more profitable the less time is really left over".

email
design(at)miikkapoutiainen.com
www.miikkapoutiainen.com

directing, manuscript & visual design
miikka poutiainen

programming
wesa aapro

sound design & music
kalle jarva

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thanks also for comments and support
maari fabritius
miikka junnila
toni sillanpää
oskari pastila
satu myllylä
veli granö (AVEK)
and others...