When it seems there is never enough time for anything, we prioritise what has to be done, at the expense of what we’d like to do. By living on an alternative clock and with the support of a chatbot, we freeze time for one hour once a day, thus making room for things that would otherwise be forever postponed. Because only when time stands still is it no longer important how we invest it.
The Society of the Frozen Hour is an invitation to rethink the way we consider time in our everyday routine. The student created a clock that runs slightly faster every hour – only by about 3 minutes – so that at your time of choice, you have a dedicated «frozen» block of one hour where you get to do something that you always wanted to do but never had the time to. The typical wish-list that always falls behind the more pressing priorities that keep getting in the way of your desires. The clock is actually working and in order to introduce and guide you through that experience, the student created «Momo», a Chatbot that accompanies you and supports your discovery of living in a new time, like a friend who shares your journey. Beyond the actual experience of time, this project addresses in an original and playful way the overall relationships we have with time in our modern society: with what is considered productive and efficient, with how we value some tasks and do not value others, with how we should «best» use our time and how we are bound to feel guilty for «wasting» time.
