The “Time Box” is a musical sculpture that gets activated when direct sunlight lands on a specific part of its structure, triggering a motor-activated miniature orchestrina attached to a resonance box that amplifies the music within the space it occupies.
By occupying the ambient with the music, a ray of sunlight - which would illuminate the same spot only for at least a minute every day- highlights a moment within the environment, it creates a materialization of the experience of time in space.
If the spectator experiences this musical sculpture a couple of times i.e. a couple of days in a row, they will start to realize that every day there is a similar moment that starts and ends, and although it happens at the same time of day it is not the exact same moment within time they have witnessed before. This realization tied for us into the feeling that we refer to as longing, the feeling of missing a moment forever gone.
Music box is the third iteration in Regina Cantu´s attempt of building time Nuomena.
“...Immanuel Kant created the term noumenon to signify unknowable reality, which he distinguished from phenomenon, the appearance of reality…” Ecyclopedia Brittanica
With the pressing question of: How to create objects that communicate the existence of time by forcibly disconnecting from the notion of a clock?, Regina Cantú pursued her graduate thesis project Epoche.