In the Sprague Gallery at Harvey Mudd College, gray floors and white walls dissolve into the background as light and color ripple across the projection. The moving images, closer to paintings than film, wash over the space while calm music hums in the air.
The minimalist setting heightens the effect: There’s nothing to distract from the way “TforX” transforms time itself into the subject of the art.
This fall, the Sprague Gallery presented “TforX: A Chronoscape,” the first solo exhibition of the artist duo Nolan Windham CM ‘25 and Jasper Eliot, a London-based artist and writer.
Curated by Arts Director Julia Hong of Harvey Mudd’s Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts, the exhibition ran from September 6 to October 10, with gallery hours Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
“TforX: A Chronoscape” featured 18 videos drawn from everyday scenes — the metro, escalators, clouds drifting overhead, public crowds. Each setting becomes raw material for the duo’s experiment in collapsing time and space into single frames.
Windham traces the project’s origins back to one night in 2021.
“Jasper asked what a slit-scan photograph would look like in motion, what that would even mean,” Windham said in email correspondence with TSL. “Neither of us knew how to approach that question, but we tried anyway.”
That singular question became the foundation of “TforX.” Slit-scan photography captures motion over time through a narrow strip of the scene, turning movement itself, rather than a single instant, into the image.
“Slit-scan photography unites everyone through its disorientation,” Windham wrote. “It reconfigures a system like time that we often assume we fully understand.”
To translate that idea into video, the pair built custom software that let them scan footage from different angles, slicing it into strips of time and space.
“Our early experiments were chaotic,” Windham wrote. “We relied on novelty to captivate viewers. Over time, though, our taste and intuition developed. Now, when capturing a new piece, we can perceive moments of time and space within the transformed perspective. It feels as if a different part of the mind is active.”
Windham, who majored in economics and data science, sees little divide between his academic background and his artistic practice.
“Art and science have shared a fascinating relationship since their inception,” Windham wrote. “New technologies, particularly computing, are merging with art in more explicit ways, blending aesthetics with entirely new mediums.”
That fusion of logic and imagination shapes how Windham conceptualises “TforX.”
“Time, and how we perceive it, is a system like any other; a subway line, a bus route, a commute,” he wrote. “These are all rigid structures that can feel inescapable. ‘TforX,’ at its best, offers a glimpse of escape.”
At the opening reception, that same quiet intensity carried through the space. Outside the gallery, alum Max Plush PZ ’25 set the tone with a DJ set of lo-fi and coffeehouse mixes that matched the show’s quiet flow.
“It was important to create a calm but interesting atmosphere so people could mingle and talk about the art,” Plush said.
Inside the Gallery, the long rectangular room glowed with slow-moving color as Plush DJ’d outside. “Despite it being very minimal, [‘TforX’] felt like being in a movie theater,” Plush said. “Because it was on a continuous loop, you could really take your time with it.”
For many attendees, though, “TforX” wasn’t just about experimental video; it was about what it means for student work to occupy professional space.
“It’s very powerful for students to have their work shown alongside professional artists,” an attendee, Stella Kazanjian SC ’27, said. “It shows that the colleges value student art as much as they value artists who’ve already made a name for themselves. In this case, the students aren’t necessarily art majors, which makes it even more meaningful.”
Kazanjian and Plush both tied that idea to the value of a liberal arts education in general.
“You have a little bit of everything here,” Kazanjian said. “The colleges really push students to try things outside their area of study, and then they support and showcase that work.”
Plush, in a similar line of thought, called the show a “full-circle moment.”
“Even though Nolan and I both have interests outside of art and humanities, the liberal arts experience gives you so many overlaps,” he said. “I’m sure plenty of people walked through that gallery and didn’t even realize it was by a Claremont student, which makes it all the more special.”
Windham credits that same community for helping the project come to life. He emphasized his appreciation for Sebastian Blue, who composed the exhibition’s score, and for curator Julia Hong for believing in the duo’s vision and supporting them through the preparation process.
“The Harvey Mudd CIS team provided the resources and encouragement that made this display a reality,” Windham wrote.
By opening its walls to student work like “TforX,” Sprague Gallery reminds the Claremont community that art doesn’t have to be confined to professional circles.
Here, experimentation and curiosity open new ways of seeing.
“We have no prescribed hope for what perspective someone might reach,” Windham said. “Only that one is reached.”
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