ARTWORK NOTES
Cube diary: a solar year
2021 - 2022
A mural of 364 digital prints, each 16.2 x 11.3cm printed with Lucia Pro pigment ink on 310gsm 100% cotton archival paper




Cube diary 01-08
2022. Archival digital print. 16.2 x 11.3 cm


Description
In essence, each photograph depicts the previous day’s activities seen in the light of the following day.

The small, coloured cubes represent choices made in relation to spending time on things that I aspire to include into my daily routine. There are 6 distinct colours used, with each colour representing a different activity, and each cube representing an amount of time spent on that activity. For example, each green cube indicates a block of time spent on art making, whereas each orange cube represents walking a particular distance. Four cubes are available per colour, making a total of 24 cubes. Obviously if more time is spent on one activity, less time is available to spend on other activities that you have decided are also a priority.

What these activities are isn’t important, it’s the fact that they have a personally identified significance, and that there is no default bias towards particular colours. It is more about balance and acknowledging the significance of even a small component of an activity being present on any given day.

The visual recording of this process involves daily photographs of cubes that represent the activities undertaken on the previous day. The white surface used as a backdrop for each image is essentially a segment of a sundial, with a pale blue timescale arc appearing at the bottom of the photograph. A line joins 2 ellipses placed at the top and bottom of the image respectively. This line is literally oriented in a polar north-south direction, with north being at the top of the image. In other words, it aligns to the earth’s axis of rotation. Beyond the border of the image and casting a shadow onto the vertical line described above, is a small sphere (in this case a bead) mounted on a thin stainless steel rod inclined at the angle of latitude of the location at which the photographs were taken.

These daily images are taken at solar noon each day over the period of a year. During the first 6 months of documentation the shadow of the small sphere travels from the ellipse at the bottom of the image, representing the date of the winter solstice, to the circle at the top: which represents the occasion of the summer solstice. During the return of the shadow to the winter solstice location it again passes over a small circle located approximately one third of the way down from the top of the image. This small circle represents the point of the spring equinox (in the southern hemisphere) on the shadow’s journey north, and the autumn equinox as it travels south. For images taken at solar time, the shadow travels directly up and down the blue vertical line, whereas in images taken at an exact clock time each day (e.g., 12pm) the path of the shadow travels in a narrow figure eight motion up and down this line, forming what is in effect an infinity symbol. The technical name for a plot of this path is an analemma, and the distortion of its shape varies depending on latitude, time of day and the surface on which it is cast.

The ’cube diary’ is an opportunity to reflect on the cumulative value of spending even a small amount of time each day on activities that are important to us, and more broadly on the transit of the earth around the sun: the rhythm of this, and its personal and seasonal implications.

Kris Smith, 2022

Exhibition title: LUMINOSITY: Inscription of time by light
Location: Maitland Regional Art Gallery. 230 High Street, Maitland, NSW 2320.
Dates: September 06 to November 20, 2022.
Opening hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-5pm