Time Spy
Sun Xun
孙逊
Production date
2016
Object Detail
Media
3D video animation (colour, sound)
Measurements
9 min 12 sec
Notes
Time Spy (2016) is a 3D animation that required more than 10,000 separate hand-carved woodcuts, animated at an old-school 15—18 frames per second, which must be watched with similarly old-school 3D glasses. Originally commissioned by Audemars Piguet, the Swiss watchmaker, a shorter version was projected onto Times Square in New York for three minutes nightly, just before midnight, in July 2017. The full-length version reveals Sun Xun’s characteristic iconography: winged violins, strange machinery, hybrid mechanised beasts, spinning planets, and the five Chinese elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth, visions that immerse viewers in Sun’s exploration of the nature of time.
Accession number
2017.103