In preparation for my final project, a continuation on Minute, I wanted to research what other people have done with time perception in art. It was actually very difficult to find any works directly related to how people experience time internally, as most time-related art works are focused on altering external environments to convince viewers that their perception has changed (for example, time-lapse).

While researching I found an interesting segment from Hugh Foley and Margaret Matlin’s book, Perception and Sensation:

Time perception might well be influenced by physiological state, knowledge, personality, and other factors. For instance, there is some evidence that a person with a high fever shortened her estimates of a 1-sec interval and that a person who lived in a cold cave lengthened his time estimates. The evidence for the contribution of metabolic rate to time perception is weak, but would be consistent with a biological clock. The fact that knowledge and experience also play a role (Theme 4), however, argues that there is a cognitive component in time perception. Alberto Montare (1985; 1988) has found that providing feedback to people about the accuracy of their time estimations increases the accuracy of subsequent judgments. Montare did not find gender differences, suggesting that time perception might be equivalent among men and women.

So it does appear that a person’s background affects their perception of time, although the most important factor may be his or her physiological state–perhaps other factors such as location effect time because they effect the body through stress and other lifestyle habits that vary by region.

Jeremy LAKHLEF – La perception du temps
Uploaded by bofman. – Watch original web videos.

Here’s one slightly related video I found, which simultaneously displays several videos which all span the same about of time, but the content of each panel affects he viewer’s time perception in a different way. It’s successful in communicating it’s point, although some of the videos are more interesting than others (the top left and bottom right) and I don’t feel that this is anything that I’ll really remember a few months from now. However, it does help me understand things I can do better in my own project: higher video quality, stronger consideration of aesthetic during filming. On the other hand, here’s a video I found which has nothing to do with time, but does really interesting spatial arrangements with video clips, which might be interesting to keep in mind while establishing the arrangements in my own project: