A new clock at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno presents an alternative way to measure time. The installation, called ‘Centuries of the Bristlecone,’ was created by artist Jonathon Keats and commissioned by the museum to highlight environmental issues. Unlike standard clocks, it tracks both Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and ‘Bristlecone Time,’ which is based on the growth rate of the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine trees found in Nevada.
Bristlecone Time reflects the slow growth of these trees, which are among the oldest living organisms on Earth. Many of these trees are located in the Nevada Bristlecone Preserve on Mount Washington. The Long Now Foundation, which manages the preserve, uses the trees as a model for projects that promote long-term thinking, including this clock.
The clock displays its gears in front of a photograph of a bristlecone pine. It shows both UTC and Bristlecone Time on a large blue disk. The disks are designed to be replaced every thousand years. The project took almost ten years to finish, partly due to the technical difficulty of building a clock that tracks two different time scales…