Life
Time Eater
Erin Shaw
Dr. John Taylor unveiled The Corpus Clock last month in Cambridge with the help of Stephen Hawking. The mechanical clock is a new take on the grasshopper escapement invented by John Harrison in 1725; the escape wheel is modeled after a chronophage, or time eater, that appears to devour the seconds shown on the LED illuminated disks. The inscription echoes the clock's reminder that tme is relative: "The world is passing away, with its desire." (Vulgate 1 John 2:17).
Creative Commons image: "Corpus Clock Reflections" by Slideshow Bob on Flickr.
10-8-08
- Erin Shaw's blog
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version





Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Propeller
Reddit
Magnoliacom
Newsvine
Furl
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Technorati
Icerocket
Smiling Sync
Of course this article would find my eyes after a breakfast conversation about this clock just this morning! We (my partner and I) would like to see a compliment to this clock....perhaps a beautiful goddess giving birth to the seconds eaten by the chronophage.
http://hiddendakini.blogspot.com
Jenn, I think that would
Jenn, I think that would actually be a prettyfucking cool installment!!!
Black Light in the Attic Podcast w/Serpicody & Sancho
http://blacklightattic.podomatic.com
fantastic... a chrono
fantastic... a chrono "trigger"...
"You have tasted death now," said the Old Man. "Is it good?"
"It is good," Mossy replied. "It is better than life."
"No... only more life."
"the world is passing away, with its desire"
so this is another passage in the passing away Bible. for in the beginningless and in the passing away, all we can say about the world, is its endless desire. i agree, and all that other stuff, war , lies, religion, newspapers, time square hallucination, what a silly thing, is desire, yet in the racing off of the seconds we desire each one. and in our human all too human desire, we make the thing of gears and years and eternal returning sending out.It all works perfectly.
so we know what a thing of beauty this contraption is, and we also know that it only points out a passing away, a reminder that time is truly of the essence.As mirrored in nature her infinite panorama.Click, click whirl the wheel, fly off around the circumference another dot of light spins into the center of the cosmos clock.Desire is at once the creator of the illusion and the observer and birth of another one.
this mechanical device holds the food of chronology.We invent the centuries old depiction.Watch the elemental watch, who the seer and the seen, the watcher and the watched.
Time eater, time the sense of it, going forwards, backwards, in and out of some transcendent wonder, dividing, adding, subtracting, abstracting, a concept of change, age upon age, linear and timeless too, calculating, time golden the ultimate natural intelligence, a thing of meditation, of rushing around, dimension upon dimension, circle of the circle, cycle, cycle the universe that will never never never measure its long count, spun the symbolic holy book that begins with a word and ends with a word, TIME, What it is, We can only say this is this a ticking off, a tock, a lick, a little green space in the clearing,a ancient pyramid to eat the stars, a turning of a fordidden lock and now it is passing away.Endless desire.Moments asking to be loved.
making it to the organic wind up grasshopper escaping.
wow
I like clocks...