Free Running Rhythms and Patterns

Time Trials was an experiment of “living without time.” For one week in from October 31st to November 6th 1999, Zittel lived in a basement studio in Berlin that was cut off from all sources of light, sound, and external indications of time. In order to understand the patterns of daily living she fell in to, she analyzed continuous time-lapse video recordings of her activities. The resulting data was color-coded and organized on a series of painted wood panels titled Free Running Rhythms and Patterns. This included diary entries with illustrations from the week as well as 25 panels documenting the 168 hours of the experiment. Each panel is comprised of seven horizontal colored bars that correspond to each of the seven days of the experiment and map the activities that Zittel performed in each hour of each day. The panels are installed consecutively so that a viewer can follow the slow change in routine as conventional divisions of time became irrelevant.