Coincidence Engine One: Universal People’s Republic Time

Installation for 1200 battery-powered alarm clocks and CNC-cut Styrofoam structure.

Coincidence Engines is a series of works conceived in homage to the Poème Symphonique for 100 Metronomes, a work by 20th-century Hungarian composer György Ligeti who used metronomes not simply to keep musical time, but as generators of sonic events.

Coincidence Engine One consists of a precisely fabricated expanded polystyrene foam construction whose form evokes an amphitheatre. Within this structure, twelve hundred clocks of identical design are arrayed in concentric arcs. These battery-powered timekeeping devices are among the most generic mass-produced analog clocks available, purchased in wholesale quantity from their manufacturer in Fuzhou, China. A single spectator/auditor participates most fully in the work by standing at its centre, entirely surrounded by the clocks and immersed in their sound.