Artist Statement

What is time? Defining time in a non-controversial manner has eluded most people. The interactive installation Time Axis evokes the consciousness of the concept of time through an unfamiliar experience – taking self-portraits and watching them vanish on paper instantaneously. Photography is a process of capturing an instance of dynamic events as a permanent visual at that moment: turning fleeting matters to permanent. Still images are time-invariant, whilst still images that fade away are time-variant: turning permanent matters to evanescent. More interestingly, the evanescence of the event captured by the image is different from that of the ephemeral image itself. The installation combines the use of thermochromic paint and thermal printers to create the effect of fading image on paper. The portrait of the participant will be captured by a camera, and printed on two types of thermal paper: one is regular receipt paper and the other is custom thermochromic paper. Images created on the thermochromic paper will disappear after a few seconds of being printed out. The mechanical noise generated by the printers is manipulated by a digital resonator and sent through the headphones to be listened by the participants to intensify their experience.

• Dr. Miu Ling Lam, Assistant Professor, School of Creative Media, Hong Kong City University