Souha Yan.
2023
Casio F-91W watches and Sharp quartz clocks with altered electronics
In I, two Casio F-91W watches each display a random time, only revealing the current time when added together.
The two watches have had their internal circuitry modified with a microcontroller running a custom firmware, seeded with a pseudo-random number generator to determine their respective times to display.
In II, two quartz clocks randomly take turns ticking. The clocks’ internal motors are modified through an installed controller board which ensures only one clock is ticking at any given time.
In turn, the current time can only be deduced by summing them, and when separated, each clock can only give one bit of information: whether the other clock is ticking.
In both instances, the two timepieces do not physically communicate. They both are aware of what the other one displays by virtue of their programming, and are thus always entangled from any distance apart.