The installation begins with a wall clock. At the same time, a Shepard-Risset tone plays: an auditory illusion and pitch circularity that create the sensation of a continuously rising pitch, like the sonic equivalent of the Penrose stairs, which never truly ascend. It invites reflection on time and sound as perceived phenomena shaped by movement, proximity, and attention, while reconsidering the concepts of beginning and end through Douglas Hofstadter’s ideas of “strange loops,” “self-reference,” and “paradox.”
The viewer is not just an observer, but an active part of the loop,
shaping the tempo of time and pitch circularity with their presence. As the viewer approaches the clock, the minute hand spins faster, and the Shepard-Risset tone cycle becomes more perceptible, eventually revealing the illusion. One must come close enough to the mechanism for the loop’s perceptual structure to become fully apparent.
This experience seeks to express the circularity of linear definitions such as “before/after” and “past/future,” while exploring how time, sound, and space can become entangled with one another.