The 24

2001
Public Site Installation


Images: © Tim Etchells

The 24 comprises a live electronic display in the public site of a bus shelter on which a text unfolds each day, spanning a period of twenty-four hours. The work develops at the rate of one phrase per minute, totaling 1440 phrases, each describing imagined sounds, events, sights and conversations from a city, shifting in mood and content as each day progresses to night. The work becomes a subtle part of the environment of the bus shelter and invites people to imagine ‘the elsewhere’ of the city they are in while they wait – creating pictures of imaginary lives, events and moments which are at a distance. At night, between midnight and 6am, the writing is manipulated live by a computer program that creates new combinations of action, image and event from the existing text – a sampling and remixing process that produces increasingly poetical, unlikely and unsettling possibilities.

Commissioned by Bradford City Council/The Culture Company. Supported by the Royal Society for Arts (RSA) through its Art for Architecture Award. Realised in collaboration with Bauman Lyons Architects and Greyworld.