The Great Year is a four screen video installation commissioned as temporary public art by Canada Bay City Council in Sydney, Australia in 2022. The work is based on a juxtaposition of the brevity of the global median human lifespan of seventy two years with the motion of the axial precession of the earth. The two screens representing the subjective 72 Seasons of a lifetime (the median human life expectancy) are based on the 72 seasons of a year in the Japanese agricultural calendar while two screens representing the Axial Precession are compressed from 26,000 years to 72 minutes to echo the duration of the lifespan screens. In real-time the 72 years has the duration of 1% o the 360 degree rotation of the movement of the earth through the axial motion where even the “fixed stars” move across the sky.
The video below is all four screens compiled into one screen view.
Excerpt from live remix performance, Sydney 2022
