Museum of Broken Watches

An iOS app version of Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky’s Museum of Broken Watches, commissioned for Nuit Blanche in Toronto, 2016. The physical artwork functions as a display of broken watches, and as a working public clock. 720 watches are each stopped at a different minute, and they collectively display all the possible hour and minute combinations of a 12-hour clock. Each watch is held in an individually-lit compartment, and the lights are digitally controlled so that only the watch showing the current time is lit.

The app serves as a portable analogue of the artwork. The current time is shown on screen, one broken watch at a time. It is a strangely immersive and meditative experience.

The app has also been used as a public projection, giving the piece a third form.