cone time

idea for a piece:

traffic cones seem to embody the stillness of a buddha in an always-changing world.  of course the cones themselves are moved around, mangled, and decay, but for the most part our daily experience of traffic cones is witnessing swiftly-moving traffic and clouds and rain while the traffic cone is a constant presence in a fixed location.

cone time will be a new media installation.  i will record video (or time-lapse photograph) a single cone (or arrangement of cones) in a landscape (once or multiple times – there could be several different landscapes with traffic cones, or one landscape with [a] traffic cone[s]).  i will make a painting (or paintings) of the same scene, emphasizing the bright orange of the traffic cone, with the other elements (e.g., street, sky) less-emphasized, less-saturated color (maybe even black-and-white).  i will write software which projects two different moments of time of the video of the cone.  one moment will just show the traffic cone.  it will be frozen in time.  perhaps somebody is walking by and has cast a shadow on the cone – the shadow will be static.  every minute or so, another moment will appear, also frozen.  the rest of the scene will show real time passing.  if someone walks by, you will see them, or their feet, or their shadow.  if a car drives by, you will see it.  the clouds moving, the sunlight changing.  but none of those things will affect the traffic cone, frozen in its own moment in time.  utterly still and not experiencing (or exhibiting) the passage of time the same way other elements of the scene (the sky, the people, the traffic) do.  the cone will show the stillness of cone time.