Designed by Maarten Baas in 2009, Real Time Analog Digital was the earlier series of his filmed clocks. Each year the Milan furniture fair attracts the design industry in droves and most designers will launch their collection for the coming year. The industry is watching and the word gets out. To mix things up in 2009; Baas launched an iPhone app with this RealTime clock, its as cheap as most apps but the concept was great and it got loads of press. Basically the clock is a 12 hour movie synchronised with the actual time. In the video there is a pane of glass that is mostly black with the translucent digits being painted out and cleaned off one minute at a time, the painter is sloppy which makes all the difference and the backlighting is red in keeping with typical digital clocks. The painter also gets really busy on the hour and struggles to keep up so sometimes its not so accurate but eventually he gets back in-time. The clock is called Realtime: Analog Digital and it has a strange affect on your regular use of a clock, we generally glance at a clock, read the time and move on, with this one you tend to look at it more intensly as he may still be changing the numbers. All of a sudden you forget about the time and get immersed in the operator, its hypnotic. Baas has gone on to create a series of other clocks in a similar fashion, I’ve listed these below.
The first in the series included Real Time: Sweeper’s Clock, 2009 as limited edition movies to private collectors and galleries. Real Time: Analog Digital distributed as an iPhone / iPad app for $1.49, I have an old unused iPad that runs this clock continuously in my home. Grandfather and Grandmother Clocks are sold as limited editions including to our very own NGV collection, Phillips auction house in NY sold an edition in 2012 for US$134,500. The latest is called the Schiphol Clock, 2016 as a special commission for a train station in The Netherlands, it’s pretty epic in proportions and I suspect more will follow. Check Maarten Baas’ website here and go to the app here.
