I think I understand what Formanek was aiming for with this.
Unlike pre-compiled footage that can just be made 24 hours long, this was done in real-time with the workers forced to match the demands of the clock without the opportunity to pause during their shifts.
Because of its real-time nature when you view the video synced to your local time you can't help but become somewhat invested in the success of the workers as they struggle to keep up with time and come very close to failing during some transitions. There's tension generated by the fact that you never know whether they'll make the next minute.
Then there's the realisation you get after having watched this for a while that it's really all pointless, that you have become personally invested in the actions of a bunch of workers struggling to keep up with re-creating one of the most basic solved problems of the modern world: A clock. It takes 70 workers working all out to do what a cheap watch can do effortlessly.
I suppose that if it succeeds in getting most viewers to think a bit about the nature of work, time and labour then it achieved its intended purpose.
Every saturday millions of people invest $100s each and colleges invest $100millions in finding out which team of people can carry a leather oval from one end of a field to another.
This is at least novel and at the end of it you have a clock.
Yes, and for more than a thousand years people have been rearranging the positions of tiny sculptures of feudal stereotypes on an 8x8 grid. What a waste of time.
And in your summary and description, there are a great many almost borderline poetic parallels to a lot of situations and things in our life; there is a tension, almost an arc... great effort but it is all in futility, in vain because there are more modern, better solutions. Old technology vs. new ones? Past vs present? Or the great effort it takes people in poor countries to do something that is totally effortless for most of us? And those are just some silly ideas but still fun to think about it, at least for me.
Unlike pre-compiled footage that can just be made 24 hours long, this was done in real-time with the workers forced to match the demands of the clock without the opportunity to pause during their shifts.
Because of its real-time nature when you view the video synced to your local time you can't help but become somewhat invested in the success of the workers as they struggle to keep up with time and come very close to failing during some transitions. There's tension generated by the fact that you never know whether they'll make the next minute.
Then there's the realisation you get after having watched this for a while that it's really all pointless, that you have become personally invested in the actions of a bunch of workers struggling to keep up with re-creating one of the most basic solved problems of the modern world: A clock. It takes 70 workers working all out to do what a cheap watch can do effortlessly.
I suppose that if it succeeds in getting most viewers to think a bit about the nature of work, time and labour then it achieved its intended purpose.