Materials Histories: Objects of Time
Turning Over Materials Histories of the Sandglass with Matthew Champion
Within the early fourteenth century, the sandglass made its debut as essentially the most exact expertise of time measurement in Europe to this point. Virtually instantly its influence was felt: cooks and courtiers, rabbis and scientists, accountants and artisans, started to make use of sandglasses to time their actions, their lives, and to make their livings. But for an instrument of such significance, the sandglass’s origins and its histories stay startlingly unclear. This paper units out some first ideas in direction of a cloth historical past of the sandglass and its significance to the historical past of temporalities. What can we study from surviving objects and proof of their use in a number of areas, genres, and media?
Matthew Champion is a Senior Lecturer in Historical past on the College of Melbourne. He has revealed broadly within the historical past of premodern temporalities and materiality, together with his 2017 Chicago monograph The Fullness of Time: Temporalities of the Fifteenth-Century Low International locations, winner of the 2018 Gladstone Prize from the Royal Historic Society. His articles have appeared in Previous & Current, Speculum, Sixteenth Century Journal and Transactions of the Royal Historic Society. He’s a co-curator of the present exhibition Albrecht Dürer’s Materials Renaissance (Arts West Gallery, College of Melbourne).
Punctuality and Progress: Reflections on Clocks, Time and Historical past with Graeme Davison
In all probability no invention has performed a extra vital half within the making of the trendy world than the mechanical clock. I’ve lengthy cherished clocks and watches. I marvel at their intricate workmanship, their delicate self-regulation and their humanoid qualities. From The Unforgiving Minute: How Australia Discovered to inform the Time (1994) to My Grandfather’s Clock (2023) clocks and altering conceptions of measured time have formed my imaginative and prescient of historical past as a lot as any human character. On this speak, I’ll mirror on the histories of some clocks I’ve recognized both as museum objects, such because the Powerhouse Museum’s Strasburg Clock, or private possessions, resembling my great-grandfather’s lengthy case-clock. What can we study from the clocks as materials objects as distinct from the data of their origins and provenance? The place does the mystique of the antiquarian finish and the knowledge of the historian start?
Graeme Davison is Emeritus Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor of Historical past at Monash College. He has written broadly on Australian historical past, heritage and public historical past the place his publications embody The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, The Use and Abuse of Australian Historical past, Automotive Wars: How the Automotive Received Our Hearts and Modified our Cities, Metropolis Dreamers: The City Creativeness in Australia and Misplaced Relations: Fortunes of My Household in Australia’s Golden Age. He’s a former chair of the Heritage Council of Victoria, an advisor to the Nationwide Museum of Australia and co-editor of a historical past of the Powerhouse Museum.
Materials Histories is introduced by Outdated Treasury Constructing in partnership with Deakin College and Australian Catholic College.” from the video introduction
