High Life

HIGH LIFE 25 H uman beings have a finite amount of time to experience the world in their lifetime. For award-winning and world-renowned Dutch designer MaartenBaas, themeaningof time and how humans perceive clocks as a tool to measure it led the artist to create an art piece marking the countdown to the highly-anticipated opening of luxuryMacau hotel Morpheus in 2018. The “Count:Down Clock” is the first real-time clock Baas has created in Asia and his first ever installation in the city, counting down the hours and minutes until the launch of City of Dreams’ Phase 3. To produce the clock, Baas and his highly accomplished team filmed six actors in real time as they carefully paint and wipe away the numbers denoting all the hours and minutes in the day on a hazy etched glass face. Every number is therefore unique, with the filming alone taking 10 days. To many individuals, time is something very precise and can be tracked, but to Baas, its meaning is far beyond just numbers. “I like to play with time, to see what happens when you squeeze it, stretch it, throw it and look at it,” he explains. “Time is related to human life and humans’ experience of time. Although clocks have a very exact mechanism in which every minute is equal, in reality every minute is a unique experience.” Someoftheseuniqueexperiences are presented in the latest edition of Baas’ acclaimed “Real Time” series, a collection of 12-hour films in which actors indicate the time minute by minute. In 2009, “Real Time” earned Baas the prestigious title of “Designer of the Year” at Design Miami. For the “Count:Down Clock” in Macau, Baas has dressed the actors in black tie to create a more stylish aesthetic.