Trapped by Time
Oren Goldman & Austin Colm 

Our art piece “Trapped by Time” shows Honi HaMe'agel, asleep for the last 70 years, waking up to find that his whole world has changed around him. In Taanit 23a, Honi asks a man planting a tree why he is planting it if it will take 70 years to grow and he will no longer be alive to reap its benefits. The man explains to Honi that even though he will not be alive, he is planting the tree for his descendants. Honi then falls asleep, and 70 years later, he awakes to see that all of the carob trees are now fully grown, and a large cave has formed over him. Our project reflects the themes of the importance of time and saving for your future descendants. We fabricated a figure representing Honi, carob trees, and a collapsing cave to display these themes. The carob trees are arranged in a circle around Honi, and the cave is placed in the middle of the piece, above Honi.The circle of trees and the collapsing cave both contribute to the idea that Honi is “Trapped by Time”. The cave in the middle of the piece is made out of felt and wire and collapses onto Honi, symbolizing the consequences of not taking advantage of your time and not realizing the immense value that time has. When the cave falls down, it covers Honi’s face and collapses onto him, symbolizing the more major changes in his life that comes after being asleep for 70 years. For example, when he wakes up he does not see his own son, just his grandson. Honi is 3D printed with a slightly sad expression on his face, signifying his confusion and disorientation after waking up and seeing how the world changed while he was asleep. The board is covered in orange sand, which contrasts with Honi showing how he is disconnected from time. We chose to cover the board in sand to show how time can quickly escape, just like how sand can easily blow away in the wind. from sight and slept for seventy years”. Honi’s disconnection from time results in him being trapped for seventy years as a consequence. Lastly, the quote from Taanit 23a in both Aramaic and English is laser cut onto the sides of our heptagon: “Sleep overcame him and he slept. A cliff formed around him, and he disappeared from sight and slept for seventy years”.

             Some components of our physical model are similar to the digital rendering and some are different. The quote that we laser cut onto our board looks fairly similar to how it looked in the digital rendering, so the effect on the viewer of the art piece is the same. Our figure looks slightly different in our digital rendering compared to our final 3D printed model. In the digital rendering the model looks very smooth and polished. Due to the nature of 3D printing, the model is made out of layers so it does not look as smooth as in the rendering. This difference should not affect the viewer's perception of the piece very much. Additionally, we printed our trees in low resolution in order to provide a more organic texture. During the test print of the leaves we noticed a warping of the print when removed from the bed. To further accentuate this, we heated the leaves up with the vacuum former and then bent them by hand. We sadly were unable to recreate the warping in fusion so the rendering features perfectly straight leaves. During assembly of the board, we decided that our piece needed one more abstract element. We polled some of our classmates and decided to color our leaves green, purple, and red inorder to create a tie-dye effect. Our cave was handcrafted from felt and wire. In Fusion we represented this with a dome and the animation shows Honi being completely covered by the cave. However, Honi while Honi was asleep for 70 years, his body did not disappear. Our group decided to cover just his face in order to show that Honi is just sleeping. In the physical model, the board is covered in orange sand. We found it hard to recreate the granular texture in fusion 360 so we represented this with a solid color.