A Clockwork Exception

A clock movement A Clockwork Exception is an interactive installation consisting of a buggy clock which attempts to pull the viewer into its own system of self-regulation. It is a physical diagram of the joke, understood as an automaton which breaks the governing heuristic of control through sheer repetitive stupidity. This break causes the clock mechanism runs out of control, leaving the viewer either to assist in altering the heuristic to regain stability, or else leaving it to find a new stable configuration by itself.

This project was first exhibited at ‘Disconnect and Punish’, Goldsmiths, London in 2011. An enhanced version was presented as part of the Abandon Normal Devices fair, at FACT Liverpool in 2013.

A Clockwork Exception scrapbook

I began to look into the history of automata. I was partciularly interested in a chess playing automaton created in the eighteenth century. I was directed to it by a reference in Walter Benjamin's first thesis on the philosophy of history ...
The temporal politics of the joke