Learning to Count Backwards

Learning to Count Backwards
2026

Seth Thomas mantel clock,
Reversed quartz movement,
Raspberry Pi,
Speaker,
Reversed audio

Build state:
Conceptual

Growing up, my dad had many grandfather clocks... tall ones... ones mounted to the walls... clocks of different sizes and temperaments, all running at once. As a kid, you get used to it, but later in life, when I stayed with him, I would stop them at night because the sound kept me awake. The constant ticking. The incessant chimes... every quarter hour, multiple clocks answering each other in the dark. In the morning, I would wind them back up. There was a ritual to it... A starting and stopping of time that felt ordinary then.

I have no idea what became of them. By the time he passed, they were already gone.

I found this clock on eBay. The wood is worn... the face is aged. My dad gave Hanne a similar one a few years ago. It's one of the few things she has of him. The mantel is the hearth... the home... the place a family orients itself around.

The clock is sealed inside a plexiglass case filled with water. The hands are frozen at 9:45... the time of death. You hear reversed ticking... reversed chimes at every quarter hour... but the clock itself doesn't move. It stopped. The water holds it there.

In college, I made a performance piece called Learning to Count Backwards... two people at industrial desks, passing nuts and bolts back and forth in an endless loop, each marking the wall with a hashmark every time they completed the task. It had no resolution.

Build process notes

Chimes in reverse audio:

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