While you were…

Births, deaths, tectonic shifts, traffic flows, and weather patterns are constantly unfolding somewhere on the planet. While you were… links these planetary-scale processes to the time experienced by an individual, making perceptible the fact that “the world is always proceeding in parallel.” Created by sensorium for the exhibition “ZEIT (Time)” held in Austria, the work was presented as a participatory installation. Visitors received a wristband-style label with a QR code at the entrance; it recorded their entry time, and, upon exiting, they received a printed receipt showing what had occurred in the world during the period they spent inside the exhibition. The receipt listed statistics corresponding to the visitor’s personal duration of stay: the number of births, the distance the Earth traveled in its orbit, the number of languages lost, and other events that actually took place during that interval. The version exhibited here is a browser-based study reproducing the experience of While you were… in digital form.