Sands of Time: Antenna Theater’s Beach Walk Through Cosmic Time
Between 1998 and 2002, Antenna Theater’s Sands of Time, raked into the shoreline, asked visitors to walk the age of the universe. A path of sculpted sand stood for time since the Big Bang, and a recorded voice led each walker toward the present. It played beaches in Marin, San Francisco and Santa Monica, plus the Burning Man playa.
Quick answer
What was Sands of Time?
Sands of Time was a walk-through artwork by Antenna Theater, staged on beaches from 1998 to 2002. A 1,300-foot path raked like a Zen garden stood for the age of the universe. Visitors walked it wearing headphones, from the Big Bang to a single grain of sand representing 2,000 years.
Why a beach? Hawking and the millennium
The idea started with a book. The Los Angeles Times’s K.C. Cole reported in 2000 that “Hardman started thinking about time in a big way when he read physicist Stephen Hawking’s bestseller ‘A Brief History of Time.’” The approaching year 2000 sharpened it.
“Basically, the millennium just became a party,” Hardman told the Marin Independent Journal. “Two thousand years was really a meaningless amount of time to celebrate… We have 13 billion years, and hardly any of them have human beings in them.” To the LA Times he put it more bluntly: “Time doesn’t orbit the birth of Jesus any more than the sun orbits the Earth.”
Antenna’s chronology calls the result “an outdoor interactive public art project that blended science, art, history, and popular culture to examine the meaning of the millennium.” A beach gave the piece what a stage could not: enough length, and grains of sand to count.
Thirteen billion years in 1,300 feet
The company’s own pages describe a piece that “rakes over 1,300 feet of beach front into a Zen garden of time,” where “visitors wearing Walkmans stroll along the beach viewing the sculpted sand while hearing the story of the universe starting from the Big Bang.” It was a headphone walk in the line of Walkmanology, Antenna’s audio-guided theater form, moved outdoors.
The length of the Sands of Time path varies by source. Antenna’s chronology says “1,000 yards of beachfront,” the Buy Some Time page says “13,000 plus feet,” and the LA Times said “five football fields long.” The 1,300-foot figure appears in the company’s 2003-2007 pages and the Marin IJ, and matches the iron markers Geotimes counted every 100 feet.
| On the beach | Stood for | Source |
|---|---|---|
| The full path, about 1,300 feet | The age of the universe, about 13 billion years by 2002 | Company pages; Marin IJ |
| 100 feet, one iron marker | One billion years | Geotimes, 2002 |
| One grain of sand | The 2,000-plus years of the common calendar | Company pages; Marin IJ |
Raking the Zen garden of time
The sand was the set, and it was made by hand. The Marin IJ described “a platoon of Antenna Theater staff and art-student volunteers” raking “a path 1,300 feet long and 13 feet wide.” It noted that “when first produced, ‘Sands of Time’ was accomplished entirely with wooden rakes.”
By 2002 the kit had grown: “a palette of styrofoam shapes to press forms into the sand, blocky styro-shoes that allow them to walk on sand without leaving footprints,” and “very tall fire-lit billion-year markers.” Geotimes saw “a large obelisk-shaped iron tower” every 100 feet, “topped with Roman numerals.”
Along the way, artworks illustrated “the arbitrariness of the Gregorian calendar.” Geotimes noted “a flood lit blanket with Elvis’ image” and the line “It could be the Elvis era.” The same doubt about calendars runs through the Journal’s piece on calendars that start on the winter solstice.
The soundtrack: Timothy Ferris and the grain of sand
Sources describe the audio in two ways. The Marin IJ said Antenna “recruited Timothy Ferris, the science writer and author of ‘The Whole Shebang,’” to narrate, while Hardman “provides the voice for the introduction and epilogue.” Geotimes wrote that “on the tape, Hardman interviews Timothy Ferris of the University of California at Berkeley.”
The 1998 audio was “compiled from interviews of astronomers, geologists, physicists and artists,” according to the Pacific Sun. A Science item quoted by Antenna gave the length as “a 30-minute journey from the Big Bang to the present.”
The ending was the point. Naomi Lubick’s Geotimes report on the 2002 beach walk through time recorded Hardman’s voice: “‘Pick up a grain of sand,’” and then, “‘In relationship to the entire beach you’ve walked down, that is 2,000 years.’”
A universe that kept getting older
The age figure changed as astronomers revised it, and the piece changed with it. Geotimes reported that Hardman would keep “changing the zero point as astronomers get closer and closer to an accurate age of the universe.”
| Year | Age of the universe used | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1998 | “15 billion-year time line” | Pacific Sun |
| 2000 | “more like a quarter past 12 billion” | Los Angeles Times |
| 2002 | “13 billion-year age of the universe” | Marin Independent Journal |
| 2002 | “about 13.2 billion” | Geotimes |
Four beach stagings and a playa
Sands of Time never played the Presidio, a venue that belongs to Euphor!um, told in the Journal’s history of Euphor!um and its Kubla Khan dream walk. Every staging was on sand. The sources disagree on several dates, so the table gives each claim with its source.
| Date | Venue | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1998, late summer | Rodeo Beach, Marin Headlands | Pacific Sun, Sept. 1998: “a few weeks back”; a 2002 release says October 1998 |
| 1998 or 1999 | Ocean Beach, San Francisco | 1998 in the company’s history; 1999 in the chronology |
| 1999 | Burning Man, Black Rock Desert | “Invited as feature artist,” per the chronology |
| Earth Day 2000 or 2002 | Santa Monica beach | 2000 per the LA Times; 2002 per the chronology |
| Oct. 18-19, 2002 | Rodeo Beach reprise | “Two nights only”; not in the chronology |
At Rodeo Beach in 1998, the Pacific Sun counted “about 600 people,” “more than twice as many as expected.” It found “the visual impact of a 15 billion-year time line was stunning, but the narration was the key.”
At Burning Man in 1999, the festival’s own history lists Antenna Theater’s “Sands of Time” among the theme installations on the inner Wheel, the year the theme was “The Wheel of Time.”
The 2002 reprise drew “several hundred people,” per Geotimes, under “an almost full moon.” Then the sea took it back: the installation “was washed away by a high tide at approximately 11 p.m., Oct. 19.”
Frequently asked questions
What was Sands of Time?
An Antenna Theater walk along a raked beach path where distance stood for time since the Big Bang, heard through a Walkman soundtrack.
How long was the Sands of Time path?
About 1,300 feet, by the company’s pages and the Marin IJ. Geotimes counted iron markers every 100 feet, one per billion years.
Where was Sands of Time performed?
Rodeo Beach in 1998 and 2002, Ocean Beach in San Francisco, Burning Man in 1999 and Santa Monica beach on Earth Day.
Who narrated Sands of Time?
Science writer Timothy Ferris, with Hardman’s introduction and epilogue, according to the Marin IJ.
The Sands of Time walk shared its zero point with AllTime, the company’s count of years from the Big Bang; the Pacific Sun wrote that “this year would be 15B 1998.” See AllTime, counting the years from the Big Bang and Antenna’s new adjustments in time. For its place among Antenna’s beach and park works, see the history of site-specific theater in the Bay Area and Antenna Theater’s production chronology.