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CNN Live Saturday

New Yorkers Watch Clocks Watching Back

Aired May 04, 2002 - 22:54   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: New Yorkers are taking time to gaze at some towering faces in a Brooklyn clock tower. And while they're watching the clock, the faces are watching them.

CNN's Jeannie Most takes just a few minutes to tell us the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNIE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You've probably been told to keep an eye on the clock, but did you every think the clock would keep an eye on you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is it? I thought it was an apparition.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was wondering, what is that? Because I thought that I was hallucinating.

MOST: They look down at us. They look up at God knows what. For almost a month, faces have graced the clock tower visible from the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: it's a little freaky.

MOOS: We're accustomed to seeing a face on a watch, be it O.J. Simpson, complete with Bronco chase, or Bill Clinton with a growing nose.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ...actually tripling in length every 10 seconds.

MOOS: But this clock takes a bit out of the Big Apple's skyline.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I thought it was the guy that lives there, just showing some home movies. I think he said it's too bad it's not porn.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When we first saw it, we thought it was like people -- they were like up to no good up there, just walking around.

MOOS: Real people are up there walking around all right. The ones who turn on four giant projectors every evening, sending out images to all four clocks on the tower.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mylar.

MOOS: Uh-huh.

Artist Michael Counts dreamed up the project as he passed by the clock tower every day.

MICHAEL COUNTS, ARTIST DIRECTOR, GALE GATES ET AL: They just thought, you know, to have somebody up there, looking out, you know, a benign, you know, a benevolent Big Brother.

MOOS: Michael got about 70 New Yorkers to play to a camera. Some actors, some friends, some strangers.

COUNTS: For the most part, they just treated the camera lens as a window, as if they were peering out onto the city.

MOOS: The one thing practically no one could resist was the urge to put an eye up to the lens, eyeballs of every race, eyeballs of every age, eyeball of every color. Eye, eye, eye. It's starting to look like lasik eye surgery.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's, you know, pleasing to the eye, but I just hope it doesn't infest the neighborhood and new -- because, you know, after the artists move in, the rich people move in.

MOOS: Well, actually, the developers who let Michael use the space plan to renovate and put it on the market for $8 to $10 million bucks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would the owner finance?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over 300 years.

MOOS: Check out the view several celebrities have. Kevin Costner to Sean P. Diddy Combs. For the clock project's finale, spectators are urged to bring along a radio, tune it to 91.1 and hear a simulcast of what the faces are saying. Now that's a clock radio.

Give that clock some eye drops.

Jeannie Most, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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