Manchester City Centre’s Beetham tower is to be the star of a unique experiment in time keeping on Midsummer’s day by turning the city into a giant sundial.
Artists Annie Harrison, Jude Macpherson and Jacqueline Wylie will spend dawn to dusk on the longest day of the year, following the shadow of the tower.
On the hour, every hour, they will mark the position of the shadow, mapping the passage of time, by leaving a photograph of the Beetham Tower taken from somewhere in the city.
All three of the Manchester based artists have an interest in the city and its urban environment and Annie Harrison told Inside the M60 that the idea came from a project they were looking at with Google Maps.
The project,which Annie tells us is really capturing the people’s imagination, will be making good use of social media.
They will tweet each hour to tell their followers about the position of the shadow, and the position of the photograph, and in the following days will post a downloadable route map so that the audience can participate in the journey.
You can follow their exploits at @mcrtimepiece.
The project is part of the Manchester Art Crawl, which is part of the Not Part Of fringe for the Manchester International Festival.