Building the PIFA time machine in Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center [video]

Time is a continuum and it is stretching out into the future at the Kimmel Center. In preparation for the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, a team of artists and engineers are putting together a time machine.

“It’s a pretty massive undertaking,” said Robery Pyzocha, PIFA’s production designer.

In the video above, Pyzocha runs through the industrial and electronic components of the enormous device.

“We do want it to kind of pierce through the space of the Kimmel Center,” he said, “and really, essentially, drag an audience in from the street.”

The interactive sculpture will take personal data input and readings such as your heartbeat and feed it back to you surprising ways. In this way, he said, “everyone’s personal data and material becomes part of the time continuum.

We humans are only around for a limited time, said Pyzocha. “But with computers, there’s no end.”