100 segundos (as soon as possible)
100 Seconds is a multimedia triptych based on the Dooms Day Clock1, a symbolic clock maintained by the board of directors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago. In the metaphor the remaining time between the current position of the needle until midnight is used as an indicator of the level of risk on a global scale of a catastrophic and irreversible event caused by human causes.
In the triptych, the values in seconds of the temporal distance at midnight are mapped to gray values. On the left as a reference a hypothetical initial time 00:00, in the center the current time (100 seconds to midnight), and on the right midnight. These values are translated into color and also written as a metaphorical visualization mechanism.
At an almost imperceptible difference in value, static overlaps as different agencies routinely do when perceiving long-term risks.
Regarding gradual processes that are already cognitively difficult to perceive in complexity (changes in the environment, in biomes, scientific developments, social techniques, etc.) we find concrete agents introducing interference. That is, contributing to the construction of ways of inhabiting the world that are incompatible with awareness of the environment, the observation of gradual processes, or simply the possibility of taking care of something more than caring for oneself.
The range 0-255 does not have enough resolution to map the difference between the current time and midnight, and an approximation had to be used to arrive at a difference of 1.
Technical, aesthetic and conceptual development
“However, what we are considering here are the mental and social consequences of the designs or schemes…For, the “message” of any medium or technology is the change in scale, rhythm or patterns that it introduces into human affairs.”2
In June 1947 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists of the University of Chicago published on its cover for the first time the so-called Dooms Day Clock. Less than two years had passed since the use by the US armed forces of the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the blocks were finished being configured and the cold war began to take shape. Two years later the Soviet Union would carry out its first test of nuclear weapons.
The editors of the board of directors of the Bulletin chose to represent the risk of a nuclear catastrophe in the form of a clock in which the distance of the hand from midnight represents the level of risk. The shorter the temporal distance, the greater the risk. They chose this metaphor to communicate that we do not need to act actively to get closer, but rather that by default the risk grows unless concrete and effective actions are taken to reduce it. In the first edition they positioned it at seven minutes.
Since then there has been a board that meets twice a year to determine whether to move the needle closer, further away or leave it in the same place depending on changes in the global panorama. Currently, other variables are taken into account in addition to nuclear risk: climate change, the development of disruptive technologies and biological risk. Since 2020 the needle is 100 seconds from the end, the closest it has been since its creation.
It is worth clarifying that those who make these decisions are a small subset of the scientific community besieged in a particular time and space (in this case, an elite university in the United States) and they deposit their biases in them2. This work is not a technocratic claim, but rather the metaphor of another metaphor to be interpreted.
100 seconds (as soon as possible) is a multimedia triptych that explores an alternative way of visualization/coding these ideas and some reflections on them. The base structure is a reinterpretation of the painting White Painting [three panel] by Robert Rauschenberg, a triptych of white canvases. In this version the numbers in seconds of the Dooms Day Clock (i.e. the risk) are mapped to gray values in each panel. From left to right is equivalent to from the past to that hypothetical future.
In the left panel an initial moment 00:00 (0 seconds) is displayed mapped to the value 255, that is, to the color white. The right panel represents the moment of the Final Judgment the time 24:00 (86400 seconds) mapped to the value 255, that is, black. In the middle the current time shown by the Clock 23:58:40 (86220) results in 0.53125. That is, if the Clock hypothesis is true, when compressed to a scale of 0-255, the difference between the present and the end of time is the minimum that can be represented. It becomes 1 due to rounding, since decimal numbers cannot be represented in this code. In practical terms, the difference is almost imperceptible and the risk is very great. These values appear as numbers visible in each panel in a second translation.
On top of this basic static representation, dynamic elements are superimposed to account for the process. Although the clock that is seen does not modify its figures, it flickers and rings to mark the passage of that abstract time that still advances as long as the hegemony of the processes that put us at risk cannot be disputed.
As we mentioned before, many times the fluctuations in these levels of danger that the Dooms Day Clock proposes to represent are imperceptible to us, whether due to the scale, the level of abstraction, the progressiveness or the silence. On these basic difficulties, we find a variety of agencies and interests that interfere with our perception/distraction regarding these things.
This interference is represented as particles. At the time of generation, the algorithm obtains the color values of the source pixel; if it is white, the particle is generated black, and vice versa. That is to say, the general noise has the greatest possible contrast with the background to stand out and be visible more as a general distortion in quantity than as a particular element.
1Official Dooms Day Clock Site: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/
3 McLuhan, M., Fiore, Q., & Agel, J. (1987). The medium is the message. Barcelona, Spain: Paidós.
3 In 2022, several scientific and non-scientific sectors questioned the decision not to move the needle despite the war unleashed between Russia and NATO countries in Ukrainian territory.