Jenny Gao
The Time of Silence
Prompt: During the past few years, we all experienced time in strange and unusual ways. Think about what that experience was like for you – and select a range of time (the whole year, one week, one day, one minute) – to use as the basis a visual exploration. Create a visual representation of a single event or a period of time from the past year. Create two maps, one that represents the event in mechanical, linear time, and one that reflects the event based on an internal/biological time.
This piece is inspired by a unique theater experience. In the dark, the silence between the actor’s two identical lines evokes tons of thoughts and worries in my mind that seem to make these 10-15 seconds eternal. On the other hand, the character on the stage reveals the resolution of the show after this silence, signifying the end of this theater experience, and it’s time to return to reality. Yet my desire to stay in this space to escape reality enhances the slow motion of time. What I hear in silence is my wish that this moment lasts forever. At last, all my mental activities extend the perception of time during these 13 seconds in the theater.