Time is based on Earth's orbit in the solar system. Through the ages, man has found various ways of measuring and visualizing time. At the end of the 19th century, developments such as the railway network prompted the introduction of time zones. This 'standard time' made it possible to express train journeys in hours and draw up timetables. It is therefore no surprise that the first concept of standard time was developed by a Canadian railway engineer, Sir Sandford Fleming. At the Meridian Conference in Washington in 1884, representatives of 27 countries agreed on the introduction of Standard Time, heralding a new era in globalization and time experience.

With the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the connection between technology and time experience was given a new impulse. Fantasies about Cyberspace included terms like spaceless place and timeless time. And at the end of the 1990s, Swatch even developed Internet Time. The impression of Internet users was that the Web made the world turn faster because online information could be distributed so much quicker than in the past. These new developments were said to take place at 'Internet Time', that is, at a terrific speed. More recently, this speed is also reflected in the permanent 'Beta' state of web 2.0 applications, and the preference for the 'fresh' and 'new' in blogosphere and social networking sites (aptly described as 'Freshness Fetish' by researcher Anne Helmond).

In the "It's About Time" program, Impakt Online invited artists to develop projects reflecting on these new notions of time on the Internet. How long is something regarded 'new' online? When is information still fresh? How do trends develop on the Internet? And how long do they last? The project A Tag's Life, which has been developed for this program, depicts the life of tags by visualizing the rise and fall of tags at the photo sharing platform Flickr.

For Impakt Online, Theo Deutinger developed World At Work, a work which zooms out and introduces a new world clock representing the worldwide 9 to 5 economy real-time.

"It's About Time" is curated by Sabine Niederer. Next to her work as freelance curator, she began her PhD research at Amsterdam University in January 2008.

Impakt Online History

For an overview of all the past projects commisioned by Impakt Online, please visit our archaeological site here.