“Make America Great Again?”
History is always written by the winners, right or wrong. In the 30’s & 40’s in America, Franklin Delano Roo-sevelt may have pushed dramatic improvements for average Americans, but that was a terrible time to be Jewish or Gay in Germany. For whites in America the 50s & 60’s might seem better, but that would not be the case if you were black in America at that time. Similarly, the 90s may have launched the internet and a new revolution of information but you would be lucky to be alive today if you were in Rwanda and were Tutsi.
The only time that even has the potential to be good for EVERYONE is the FUTURE.
The spark of inspiration for this piece came from the presumptuous “Make America Great Again” slogan and a conversation with an editor friend about how we have not had anything that is really GOOD to rally behind together as Americans since the space program ended. This conversation stimulated me to research those triangle cone shaped space capsules and the whole space program when it was at its height. While looking and researching these space capsules it occurred to me, in this stage of distorted history, that I want to build a time machine to set the record straight on ‘when’ was GREAT for all of us.
Using basic Google image searches that currently exist along with the maximum wifi broadband streaming capabilities that exist I would create a program that sorts and curates images that I can rapidly project on all four walls of the room housing The Time Machine. This whole idea of building a space craft or time machine of some sort is part of my own very vivid childhood day-dreaming and fantasies. Having moved my studio back home to Pittsburgh, I am finding an exciting alignment with the deep media and arts experience I have had during my 30 years in NYC along with a reawakened childhood imagination.
My Time Machine will reveal the good and the bad of any year that is punched into its console by boldly blanketing all surrounding walls in the room with projected and rapidly switching images and news from the internet streaming through high-speed Google image search engines that exist. My Time Machine would be programed to sort and balance images focusing on peace, war, ground-breaking inventions, human progress, set backs, triumphs, atrocities and dramatic failures. A mix of the good and bad.
This project experience starts with My Time Machine sitting in a white walled room. Preferably square. Visitors can walk around the room and watch the walls changing or can actually sit in the time machine. From the inside, one punches a year into the console. There is a moment of light and movement of parts and small devises in The Time Machine as the internet search engines process. Then images begin to project on the walls increasing in speed and wall coverage until these projected images are all over the walls everywhere around you. The images keep swapping in and out, overlapping like a collage everywhere. The capsule would be built from an aluminum frame covered in small gold and brown circuit/motherboards creating a translucent quality to the solid oval shaped sphere it is.
For those intrigued more with the future (like me), programing will mix the search algorithms for any year be-yond the current one to focus on predicted environmental changes, very progressive architecture, engineering experimentation for the future as well as new predicted technology possibilities for that future. There is a ton of this information and images and renderings again through simple Google searches everywhere. I want the biggest focus on the future to be hopeful, but only with our own work and effort right now to get there.
Additionally, I am designing an Augmented Reality element for anyone visiting The Time Machine. Our solar system and the stars around us fill the space of the room all around The Time Machine when viewed through the lenses of Augmented Reality. The planets and stars either move forward or backward depending on the year selected on the console. The AR elements are created to subconsciously remind us of the much bigger universe and to bring more soul into the workings of the machine.