2014 - 2015

The Ghost in the Machine
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Rhys Williams (2nd Year)

FTSE/FTTZ, Financial Times Time Zone






A fine web of temporal indices stretches through the City acting to define the beat of its production today.  Whether in the rhythm induced by the FTSE’s fifteen second updates, in the millisecond vibrations of high frequency trading algorithms, or even the nanosecond hum that will emanate from the technologies of tomorrow.  Within the City, a space which would have once reverberated with the tolling of ecclesiastical refrains, and after the division of the earth to the twenty four beats of empire, there rhythms are now being replaced by those of a new financial time. One that is to be impacted by the strangeness formed by London’s geology and global positions – it has the strongest gravity of any of the worlds financial markets, and as such the slowest time.

In this was, a global image, that is to say a single sphere with a smooth surface can no longer exists – instead it ‘foams’, bubbling and popping in a froth of change and difference. This is true both spatially and temporarily. And, in a way, it is this lie, a lie sometimes called ‘globalization’, told through the supposed smoothing of space and time, which is of most interest.

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Find out more about  Rhys’s topic with the research article ->


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