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Capturing Passing Time
Panerai “Slice of Time” installation

The passing of time is something we all know exists, but never physically see. Timepieces were invented as a way to help us visualise, quantify and communicate time.

The “Slice of Time” installation-event commissioned by Panerai first debuted at Tokyo Design Week and was more recently presented at the Salone del Mobile in Milan last week. The installation is designed by multifarious Japanese designer Oki Sato and his studio Nendo, as a physical form for interpreting the concept of time.

First an empty, transparent shell design featuring Panerai’s signature numerals and square-shaped case was created and was stretched to 16 metres using an extrusion process. Then the long empty shell element was sliced up on site for customers during the event, while the thicknesses of the slices were decided by the exact time of the creation. Each piece was then polished, sand blasted and assembled to form a functional timepiece in the interacting circular spaces that resembled the mechanism of a clock. Just like the sand in an hourglass, the installation comes to an end when the final piece from the empty shell had been used up.

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