Myriad Falls

In Myriad Falls, sensed time is disrupted via the mechanics of time-keeping, cinematic time, and natural forces.

Leber and Chesworth have uncovered a circular machine, designed to activate an array of self-winding wristwatches, that replicates the complex arm movements of watch-wearers. The spiralling action of the device appears to be tossing time into the rotating watches and the surrounding world.

Under a pressure test, we see an original scuba-diving watch, made to withstand huge underwater forces. As the pressure bubbles appear and aggregate, we register each change as a marker of time. 

Similarly, from simple beginnings, a complex sonic drone slowly builds throughout the soundtrack, where each sonic element is periodically added to the accumulating of moments of time. Is time a single measurable event or is time made up of an infinite number of durations? Can time be fully sensed or can it only be lived in parts?

We encounter a floral clock. Its flowers and plants, through their seasonal growth, manifest another kind of duration. The plants and the time-telling hands move about in disarray, as strong winds present yet another invisible durational force. 

Birdsong appears across a blank screen. The periodical patterns of Australian Chiming Wedgebills present a multitude of individual patterns; each producing a related call, as an individual rendition within its own timeframe. 

Exhibitions: Sonia Leber & David Chesworth: What Listening Knows, Messums Wiltshire, UK (2021); Nuit Blanche, Fondation Fiminco, Paris (2020); Architecture Makes Us, UNSW Galleries, Sydney (2019); Architecture Makes Us, Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane (2019); Architecture Makes Us, Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Melbourne (2018); The Real and Other Places presented by CCP at Photofair Shanghai, China (2017)

The artists gratefully acknowledge the encouragement and support of Rory Macdonald, Horologist.

Additional thanks to Citipower Powercor and Multisonics. This project has been generously supported by the Australia Council.

Responses
'An enthralling rumination on chronometric time through the filming of a cluster of outmoded analogue wristwatches installed on a calibrating machine in a horologist’s workshop. The watches’ intricate internal circular mechanisms find accord in the machine’s calculated rotations; the dual modalities of time and motion, the durational and superannuated, forming a mesmerizingly dynamic interplay.'
- Sophie Knezic, Frieze, July 2018