Sunrise/Sunset

Madeline Hollander’s Sunrise/Sunset (2021) is a live installation featuring 96 recycled automobile headlights that operate collectively to become a world clock. Through this work, the artist highlights the choreography of the invisible systems that shape the human experience. Sunrise/Sunset showcases how our planet’s spinning motion is the guiding force dictating our everyday movements, patterns and cultural habits.

The headlights form a global time zone map that performs with the earth’s rotation. As the sun rises and sets across the globe, the headlights react, turning on when moving into the night and off when entering daylight, blinking and shifting in real-time according to their location in the world. The result is an image of global connectedness emerging from the interaction between individual actions, technological automation and cosmic forces.