Author's intro

A number of personal experiences are bound with time. These are also experiences and surprises, because time, tack and duration are not the same in different moments of time, life periods, different geographical stops. Sometimes time is "more quick", another time it is "slower". Actually we know that the Earth turns around with the same speed, but personal years, days, seconds seem different.

The speed of time is subjectively sensable, it's passing by is characterized by the density of meaningful events per a unit of time. If the density is large and if it is accrued by physical relocation and the the experiencing of new, person's impressions are that something is taking place and happening. Then the feeling occurs, that you have been part of something, that you have gained something.

If the density of events is small and the relocation doesn't happen, the time seems to be slower. Also in that case you can feel as being part of something. The question lies in which way happens to be today's existence, it's density and how different this period is from non-everyday-like. If dense, kaleidoscopic and varied becomes everydaylike, the experience turns out to be more slow and invariable existence.

The simplest way to change your subjective experience is by travelling. The relocation in space creates the impression of time travelling.

The places differ from each other not only by buildings and people, but also by the meaning of time, which characterizes them. Just to simplify every country, town or area, has it's own speed or rhythm, as it probably happens to be with people.

Project "tokyocity.ee" is drawn on personal experiences about one city. Tokyo is a megatown, supercity, conglomeration, agglomeration, total accumulation and supernatural hybrid. I was interested by experiences, which arise staying in this city-machine. But the myth about Tokyo is more major than the city itself. There everything seems more smaller and dimensions are human. The city is a functional machine organized to a nationally noncharacterized environment. The prevaling experiences were not experiences with people, buildings and architecture, they of course existed as well, but experiences with time. Experiences about this invisible matter. Also about how the invisibleness there differs from the habitual invisible here.

Videofragments in the installation and CD-ROM are shot from the Tokyo onground circle railway Yamanote Line.

Raivo Kelomees