The Line Takes Time
Overview
The Line Takes Time investigates Weimar through walking, duration, and line. It explores how a line is produced not only by movement through space, but also by the time spent in certain places.
In this project, the line is both something measurable and something relational. It is generated through speed, rhythm, pauses, and dwell time, yet it also points to the idea that forming a relation with a place takes time. The line does not simply pass through the city; it gains weight where time, attention, and attachment begin to gather.
The project begins with the question: How does a walking body produce different lines of duration across different spatial conditions? In a small and accessible city like Weimar, time is not only about travel distance, but also about where one chooses to stay, slow down, or pass through.
Background: From Malleable Boundaries to The Line Takes Time
The idea of ''bubble conditions'' in The Line Takes Time comes from the notion of social bubbles that we explored in previous group project, Malleable Boundaries. Malleable Boundaries_Submission During that process, I was especially interested in the possible bubble between campus users and local residents in Weimar. Malleable Boundaries approached invisible social boundaries through proximity, distance, separation, and the relation between bodies. In that project, the bubble was not understood as a physically drawn boundary, but rather as a condition in which people may share the same space while still remaining separated through different agendas, perceptions, and ways of relating to one another. The installation represented this bubble analogy through the construction of two separate rooms, aiming to create a visual and bodily connection between two strangers located in different spaces.
The Line Takes Time does not directly continue that project, but carries the question it opened into another scale. Instead of focusing on an enclosed installation space, the project turns toward the urban structure of Weimar. It asks whether certain areas within the city are experienced as more separated, inward-looking, or selective than others. In this sense, the “bubble” is not treated as a fixed conclusion, but as a condition to be investigated through walking, thresholds, passages, and the time spent in particular places.
Because Weimar is a small and accessible city, the question of the bubble cannot be read only through distance or transportation. The relation between a place and the city may be understood less through how long it takes to reach it, and more through how much time is spent there, whether one merely passes through it, or whether the place holds the body for a while. Therefore, the project considers bubble conditions not only through walking routes, but also through slowing down, staying, repetition, and the duration of being in a place.
In this context, The Line Takes Time asks whether certain areas in Weimar - such as the campus, cultural spaces, transitional zones, or social gathering points - produce their own temporal rhythms and boundaries. Do people, for example a student, simply pass through these areas, or do they spend time there and form a relation with them? Rather than producing an analytical city map, the project investigates these questions by translating walking and duration into a line-based notation.
Method & Technology
The project uses walking as a method of artistic research. Walks across different areas, passages, and thresholds (?) in Weimar will be recorded as traces of movement, speed, rhythm, and time spent. The aim is not to use the trace as a conventional map, but to translate it into a line-based notation by investigating spatio-temporal dimension of the line.
The line notation is still in development. At this stage, I am interested in how pauses, slowing down, and dwell time can gain a geometric weight within the line.
Technically, the project may use GPS-based walking data together with TouchDesigner as a visual environment for translating movement and duration into video plotting or animated line drawings.
The walking data may be collected through [one or more participants], most likely students, who record a walk for a defined period of time. [The number of participants] is still open. It is also still being considered whether the walks will follow [a given route] or emerge from each [participant’s own movement through the city].
The final form of the output is also still in progress. Possible outcomes include individual walking plots, collective walking plots, video plotting, or animated line drawings. At this stage, the project remains open to testing how single and multiple walks can be translated into different line-based forms.
[Possible] Installation
The project may result in a series of walking plots, drawings, video plots, or a line-based installation. These outputs translate walking data into visual patterns of movement, duration, staying, and spatial relation.