Shlomit Lehavi
Media installation, US, 2011
Time Sifter is a viewer-controlled environment immersed in visuals and sounds that plays on the theme of the time-machine in the digital age. Time Sifter suggests a journey in time through motion, space and sound. A totem pole shaped steel construction, composed of circular wooden sieves (that were hand-crafted in Istanbul and retrofitted with projection material), is both the mechanism and the metaphor of sifting time. The viewer interacts with the piece by flipping the sieves around the x-axis. With each flip, the video content changes so that the viewer has control over re-creating the environment, the video sequences and the narrative. The translucent mesh creates a two-layered, three-dimensional effect on the screened video inside the round sieve and hence an additional experience of time and space.