Time Machines
The arc of human history is immense, spanning millennia through today. We demarcate this incomprehensible length of our lineage into smaller periods to help us understand our species, our culture. These archeological milestones are integral moments in time, and these moments are defined by the technology we develop in that era—The Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Industrial Revolution; we have always defined our history and ourselves through the lens of our scientific and technological advancements. Time and Machines are integrally linked for humanity.
Time Machines is an immersive group exhibition in which machines become storytellers, time travelers, and intimate companions. Harkening to the past, present, and future, this show explores how technological mediums shape — and are shaped by — human contact and communication.
Despite our ambivalence toward these machines — our frustration, our dependence, our desire to unplug — Time Machines reminds us how deeply intimate these relationships are. Our machines hold our secrets, anticipate our needs, and shape our sense of self and society.
In a world where the medium is the message, Time Machines asks: How do our devices reflect us, speak for us, and sometimes speak over us? The exhibit gathers interactive machines that blur the line between organic and synthetic, human and non-human, past and present. In this show, art and design become acts of speculation — asking not just what machines do for us, but what we owe to them, to each other, and to the futures we are building now with our mechanical companions.
