Bone Clock

I’m interested in how the past speaks to us beyond our conventional metrics of minutes and years, but as something much, much older.

Bone Clock is made of bamboo bones – bamboo poles split longitudinally to reveal the interior node walls. The bones form a circular shape reminiscent of a clock.

Bamboo and human bone share a remarkable correspondence. In medicine, bamboo is used as a bone-graft substitute. Human blood cells enter the bamboo implant, recognise it as real bone, build vascular structures around it and finally replace it with new, natural bone.

So Bone Clock is dealing with an anologue of human bones, and bones are a symbol of archeology, something dug up from a little-known past.

Bamboo too is old – very old. Bamboo fossils are 300 dated at some million years old, making it likely that this huge grass was possibly the dinasaur’s favourite snack.

The clock suggests time beyond our conventional usage, telling time to an ancient metric.