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Net Art News February 1, 2006

Punching the Clock

By Peggy MacKinnon

“Clockwork,” a documentary-style series of four short multi-channel video works by Jeanne C. Finley and John Muse, centers around the concept of time–as social ordering tool, as cultural construct, and as an intrinsic element in video art. The project features clips recorded at a dentist’s office, a hair salon, a massage therapist’s studio, and a teenage boys’ sleepover party. Catalyzed by the viewer’s voyeuristic gaze, the pieces (titled Drill, Shampoo, Massage, and Birthday) aim to “restructure the long arc of these intimate relations, revealing otherwise invisible habits of work and play.” The images serve as indices for ideas surrounding our relationship with time, work, leisure, and self, while foregrounding the ambivalent role of technology in human culture since the dawn of the machine age. West Coast readers should make time to visit San Francisco’s Patricia Sweetow Gallery before February 11.