2025
Powder coated steel, electronics, LED displays, lights, air cooling system, custom database and code.
9 x 9 x 1.7 mt

The Invisible Compass functions as both a compass and a clock. It consists of two circular LED bands: the upper band displays time as the number of hours passed since the day began and until tomorrow arrives, while the lower band shows destinations around the globe alongside the time or distance required to reach them.

Alongside measuring time, the work proposes ways of inhabiting it. At intervals, the artwork offers suggestions to the audience, translating units of time into potential experiences. These may include reading a specific book within the time displayed, listening to a musician’s discography a certain number of times, or engaging in other activities that reframe time as something that can be meaningfully spent rather than simply counted.

At times, these proposals are generated using a large language model, which introduces unpredictable associations, chance-based poetry, and speculative or impossible tasks. This process produces unexpected connections between time, knowledge, and imagination, allowing language itself to become a material through which time is rethought.

By combining information, instruction, and algorithmic imagination, the artwork encourages visitors to reflect on their own temporal position and agency. It invites both physical and mental travel, prompting audiences to imagine alternative uses of time and other possible locations in relation to Cardinal Place, the site in which the work is installed.

Part of The Four Winds, a public project developed with curator Aldo Rinaldi, artist Eva Berendes and Maich Swift Architects, commissioned by Landsec.

Technical design, fabrication, installation:
The White Wall Company
Video and lighting: ADi
Coding: Pierre Tardif

Photography: Ioana Marinescu