Can you visualize the time that's passing by in a bar environment? Can you use objects that are at home in a bar?
IDEA
The objects on top of the bar counter are the protagonists in this design: glasses, ashtrays, cigarette boxes but also guests who are touching the table.
The element actually visualizing the passing of time are the objects' shadows - artificial shadows instead of natural ones which have two properties:
The rotation of the shadow shows, similar to a sun-dial, the real time that has passed. One full turn is in this design equivalent to one hour. The inclination of the object's shadow also works analog to the sun's position but actually indicates the time that the glass or ashtray has been sitting on the counter without having been moved.
So the shadow-metaphor is combining two different layers of time-information, the macrotime (outside world) and the microtime (bar environment) through a very natural phenomenon.
SETUP
The setup for a one-meter-segment of the bar counter would consist of a camera that is tracking the objects on the surface, a computer that is processing the information and generating the actual shadows from it. A projector then would be back-projecting from below on the actual surface which is to be made of frosted glass.
