YOU START SOMETHING NOT KNOWING WHAT IT WILL BE...

You start something not knowing what it will be.

You have a sense that it is something but you can't be sure.  The only way to know is to do it and that is terrifying.

You try to have no expectations but that is impossible. You want so desperately for it to work and even more desperately not to fail.  You want to it to be perfect – to record the experience honestly (yet beautifully) - you live in constant fear of fucking it up.  You hope the data that you have is enough - that there wasn't another way – a better way it could have been collected because it is already too late now – you have created a system and you are stuck with it. You want it to be more that just about failure - but everywhere you look it's the first thing you see.

You are somewhere between the past and the future but not quite in the present – always a beat behind – a fraction off - hoping you will eventually catch up with yourself.

You are tired. You ache. You wish to god you could sleep but its only 3pm and you have another eight hours. Its hot – stifling hot – like day // like night // like purgatory. It would be all better if you slept but you are already sleeping eight hours a night ( well, maybe six – which is not less than you normally would) – yet those hours feel thinner – watered down and waking in the twilight only makes you tired again.

It's nearly 1am (on Earth) and you maybe have two more productive hours before the walls come crashing down...  

And while it this really isn't news to anyone you come to realize you could never be an astronaut.

Aside from the scientific skill – the mental acuity – physical dexterity and general composure you simply don't function without sleep and coffee and light, and plants... 

....TO BE CONTINUED....

WAITING FOR SLEEP

It's light again.
Sunrise changes everything.
I am suddenly feel more alert - yet also calmer – I know its going to be okay.
The Earth has once again turned on its axis and the dark heat is over. I'm tired, weary but soon I will sleep – I will curl up, close my eyes and time will shift again.


 

SOL FIVE: 12:18 ET // 09:00 ET

I'm not sure I am ready to write anything about today other than it was hard. 
The combined heat, sleep deprivation /irregularity and general sense of isolation got the better of me and I was overcome with sadness.

I know this is part of the process and the only way to deal with it is to move through it.

So while teary eyed I sanded back twenty wooden rulers – erasing the marks of measure and standard to leave behind barely a memory of its former self. I had been waiting to do this for quite some time (the first of these I made way back in 2013) so on what has been a rather ordinary day it is somewhat satisfying to see the first twenty hanging together. Not sure how many I am going end up with in total... (but another eighty are already on their way... ) 

SOL FOUR: AN OUTING

It was not without some trepidation that I attempted an outing on the fourth full day of htss but with friend in town and my time still relatively in sync I thought it might be last time for me to leave my little corner of Brooklyn for a while. And so with a little bit of co-ordination we boarded a train for Dia: Beacon.

XXXXX!
HOW ARE YOU? HOPE YOU HAVE BEEN ENJOYING YOUR FIRST FEW DAYS IN NYC!

I HAVE BEEN LOOKING INTO DIA FOR TOMORROW AND WANTED TO TALK TIMES...

AS YOU KNOW I'M NOW ON A MARS SCHEDULE... THIS MEANS THAT TOMORROW MY 07:00 OCCURS AT 09:36 EARTH TIME.

THE TRAIN TO BEACON LEAVES FROM GRAND CENTRAL STATION AND TAKING INTO ACCOUNT TRAVEL TIME FROM HERE THE EARLIEST TRAIN I CAN CATCH WILL LEAVE AT 09:04 MARS TIME // 11:43 EARTH TIME, ARRIVING IN BEACON AT  10:30 MARS TIME // 13:11 EARTH TIME.

LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK XX

I have been overly cautious with times, nervous that back and forth between Mars and Earth might catch me off guard but it in fact worked very smoothly and was achieved with very little trouble. 

At 2.5 hours difference things still seemed rather manageable and I feel comfortable shifting between the two. I only faltered on the return home when I realized all around me were making their way home for dinner and sleep... whereas I, still function at around 17:30 MT suddenly understood I was out of phase with my environment. 

It is amazing how many subtle social indicators emerge as the sun goes down - how bodies shift, heads tilt and the muscles ready themselves for sleep. To be one step removed from that makes my mind tense. I oscillate between the system I know (like muscle memory) and the one I have assigned myself and I cannot now rest comfortably in either.  

FOR THE LOVE OF DATA

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As the video streaming does its thing and I try to quietly forget about it – I am actively collecting data of another kind in the old-school analog way...

These four books are reference points to my activities and interactions - each serving as specific purpose.

The Visitor Check-In to record visitors to the gallery and documents the time of their interaction in both Mars and Earth time.

The Outings book is my equivalent to log my departure from the space stating times, objectives and outcomes of each and every entry into the outside world.

The Log Book is a journal - similar to this forum where I will think through concepts / experiences and plan further action 

And last but not least is the Field Notebook, which (surprise surprise !) is to record my actions outside!

i hope these books become a record of physical experiences as imperfect and impractical as they are – should you visit me in the space - please feel free to look through them! xx

SOL TWO: 10:20 ET // 9:00 MT

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I began the project with a photo at 9am MT and I am going to try (when I can) to keep up the tradition.. the time slip has begun in earnest... 

GOOD AFTERNOON, GOOD EVENING AND GOODNIGHT.

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The idea of being documented at all, let alone all the time is something I hate to think about.

I don't like being photographed and don't particularly like being watched either - yet here we are.... with both happening simultaneously!

That's right gentle viewers, for the duration of HTSS I will be recording my movements in the gallery space via Live Stream which can be watched here 24/7. 

Don't expect a great deal of exciting footage... it's going to be mostly writing, working and sleeping but if you are lucky and I forget that the camera is there you might also get a glimpse of my awesome dance moves.

In all honesty I'm trying hard not to think about people actually watching it (so the fact that I'm posting about it is absolutely ridiculous) but I mention it in recognition that the only thing that goes beyond my gut-wrenching displeasure of being photographed is my pure and absolute love of data collection so while I have no idea what I will do with it yet but by the end of the project I will have almost 873 Mars hours // 897 Earth hours of data and that's something. 
 

SOL ONE: WHAT DOES YOUR IDEAL DAY LOOK LIKE ?

Working out a viable schedule has been hard.

I am not one to live by the rigors of routine (it has previously been suggested that the exactitude of this project is in defiance of my very nature) so I have been reluctant to commit to anything that would preclude spontaneous human experiences. However I am aware of the virtues consistency can provide when everything else is in a state of flux so I have persevered and devised this....  a rough plan for living can be abandoned at a moments notice...and I think it feels about right. 

My intention has always been to try and maintain a fairly 'normal' life while operating on Mars time. As much as experiencing the shift of time itself, I wanted to see how my interactions with the world would need to be re-negotiated and re-imagined - how my relationships with friends and strangers be altered and how I 'mastered' the need for constant conversion.

I wanted the work to be a lived experience and thus adaptable to the realities that only lived experience can provide – an experiment with an unknown outcome. 

With that said – I have also felt a need to formalize some rules for myself – some parameters that will be expanded through the act of doing.

Of all the possible rule I could set for myself the only one etched in stone is that I must always abide by my Mars local time. This means irrespective of activity or occasion  I must only undertake actions that conform to my time on Mars and I must encourage other to do so.  In reality this would mean that I eat breakfast during my morning regardless the time on Earth, and should I be accompanied by other people during a meal or activity I would request that they abide by my time also.

I must also specify if an action is to occur according to time on Mars or time on Earth and, where possible, choose Mars time as the default time, schedule events to occur on the Mars hour / half hour rather than preferencing Earth.

These are two simple rules but they are a place to start and I can already see them having much broader consequences... until later xx
 

SOL ZERO: 09:00 ET // 09:00 MT

How the Stars Stand had to start somewhere. And so it began at 09:00 am on July 15th, 2015.  

This randomly appointed time and date anchored my project to a location on Mars, chosen for no other reason than it shared the exact same time at that exact same moment. Now, the time of 189.400°E has become my own. 

This log book will be an account of my experience on Mars time – living and working through a 24h 39m and 35s day while negotiating the realities of an Earth-bound existence.

I will try and document the experience as often and as accurately as possible – sharing the successes, failures and unexpected consequences of being out-of-sync with the outside world.

At the moment it is difficult to even conceive of how things might change - as today feels almost like any other...  On any given day minutes are inexplicably lost so turning the clock back by such small increments does not yet allude to the drastic shifts that I know are coming... I am still waiting for that moment where I realize exactly what I have gotten myself into.

I think my first few days are going to be largely administrative. I need to adjust to both my new space and my new time and determine a schedule that I can operate in both by.

This website will provide a platform to collate written thoughts with visual documents as I explore my shifting sense of time and experience. Everything published will be a work of process in process: a log of things finished and fleeting, understood and unknown. It is a record of time through time and it has already begun. x