While walking around Union Square on Halloween, I took newfound notice at the huge artwork plastered on a building. I never paid it much attention, but perhaps the (what I think looks like a) wand and the smoke on Halloween gave the day a more magical appearance, so I watched it for a bit, pondering its significance.

The piece done by artists Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel and is called Metronome. They describe the piece to be “an investigation into the nature of time,” which incorporates a variety of symbolic aspects.

The digital clock is called “the Passage”, the five-foot-wide circle is called “the Infinity”, the hand is called “the Relic”, the gold overlay is called “the Source”, the brick wall is called “the Vortex”, the rock is called “the Matter”, the lunar time piece on the far left is called “the Phases”, and the needle is called “the Focus”. It’s clear to say that there’s a lot of symbolic meaning to this piece, much of which revolve around energy, time, earth and God. “The Vortex” stands for a metaphor of the rotation of the earth and the passing of time, “the Matter” is suggestive of geological times when Manhattan was simply made of bedrock, and “the Infinity”, which strikes a tone at noon and midnight, shows the importance of time.

“Ultimately, the work is an ode to mortality and the impossibility of knowing time,” which is supposed to contrast the digital clock on the right. To read the digital clock, look at the seven leftmost digits, which show time in a conventional 24-hour format, going left to right showing hours, minutes, seconds and tenths of a second. The seven rightmost digits display the time remaining in a 24-hour day counting backwards, once again, left to right, to show the tenths of a second, seconds, minutes and hours left in the day.

I don’t know why I never cared for the piece or gave it much notice, perhaps because I find it rather drab, and its symbolic meaning certainly won’t jump out at you, it’s a piece one would seriously have to ponder. Similar to my reaction, yet perhaps a bit more harsh, critics alike have generally found the Metronome to be a waste of space, dubbing it a pretentious “wailing wail…where the death of aesthetics can be contemplated.”

Little Fun Fact: Metronome cost $3 million to produce