Katie Paterson’s work is often to be found at enormous heights. In close collaboration with scientists, this artist, a Scot by birth, explores the furthest corners of the universe. In her conceptual projects she combines scientific experiments and advanced technologies with a poetic longing for the sublime and for notions of time that often escape our rational faculties. She gained fame, for example, with her History of Darkness project, a series of slides and photographs onto which she projected 27,000 dead stars. In her Earth-Moon-Earth work, she sent Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to the moon and back, with the aid of so-called moon-bouncers.
Paterson’s Timepiece (Solar System) work, which is on display in Hemelbestormers, is comprised of nine clocks that display the time on all the planets in our solar system, including our own moon. The length of a day varies per planet, from 9 hours and 56 minutes on Jupiter to 4223 hours on Mercury. The clocks have been adjusted to display the time in relation to the time on the other planets and to the time on earth.
Mercury 4223 hours
Venus 2802 hours
Earth 24 hours
Moon 708 hours
Mars 24 hours and 40 minutes
Jupiter 9 hours and 56 minutes
Saturn 10 hours and 39 minutes
Uranus 17 hours and 14 minutes
Neptune 16 hours and 6 minutes