Time, Assigned
Everyday Objects Operating on Different Clocks
This project began as an observation of the objects I interact with daily and the invisible systems that govern their usefulness, relevance, and validity over time. Placed together, these items form a quiet inventory of modern life: devices, documents, consumables, and currency, each operating on a different temporal logic imposed by material limits, institutional rules, or designed expiration.
Rather than focusing on failure or replacement, I was interested in how time is embedded differently across systems. Some objects degrade physically through use, others expire through policy, while others lose relevance through software support or economic structures. A driver’s license becomes invalid overnight due to a fixed administrative rule. Medication is rendered unusable past a specific date. A charging cable fails unpredictably. A smartwatch slowly loses capacity as its battery ages. In contrast, cash retains validity without a defined expiration, storing value abstractly even as the objects around it decay.
By presenting these items without hierarchy or narrative sequencing, the image treats expiration as a condition rather than an event. The labels function as metadata rather than explanation, emphasizing how each object is governed by a different system of time. Some clocks are negotiated, some are enforced, and some are invisible until they are breached.
The project is intentionally minimal and observational. There is no proposed solution, only a reframing of how expiration operates across personal, institutional, technological, and economic systems. By situating these objects together, the work invites viewers to consider how much of everyday life is structured around designed lifespans and how rarely those timelines align.
This piece reflects my broader interest in systems-oriented design and communication. I am drawn to work that reveals underlying structures rather than surfaces, using restraint to allow meaning to emerge through comparison and proximity. Here, time becomes the medium, and expiration becomes a shared language through which objects quietly communicate the rules that shape contemporary experience.
