Art at Amtrak Unveils New Digital Video Installation at Moynihan Train Hall

We Are Made of Time by Tin & Ed uses geology and time to capture visitors’ attention

NEW YORK – Amtrak – in partnership with Moynihan Train Hall and Empire State Development – continues its celebrated Art at Amtrak public art program with a new video installation at Moynihan Train Hall, We Are Made of Time by artists Tin & Ed. The piece is live until Monday, July 15 and is featured on the station’s 160-foot-wide, state-of-the-art 4mm LED digital screens. For the first time in program history, it will also run on the station’s digital advertising display boards. We Are Made of Time performs a temporal magic trick, compressing 4.5 billion years of Earth’s geological change into a symphonic moment.

“By investing in artwork and continuing to produce new installations like We Are Made of Time, Amtrak stations now double as art galleries,” said Art at Amtrak Director Sharon Tepper. “Amtrak continues to enhance our customer experience through Art at Amtrak, and via Tin & Ed’s new video, we have added a unique and educational adventure to their trip.”

Like a cabinet of curiosity, their film layers time scales together—cosmic, geological and biological—revealing loops, patterns and connections, at once ancient and beyond our lifetime. Viewers are invited to see time as non-linear, considering how geological events millions of years ago still connect to us. Using procedural modeling software, Tin & Ed have generated rocks, minerals, 3D sculpted fossils and scanned elements, including Tennessee Marble used in the construction of Moynihan Train Hall and the original Penn Station. These items are placed into a fluid constantly shifting panoramic landscape—one unmoored from linear time.

From childhood, Tin & Ed were avid rock collectors, searching the earth for precious finds, scouring their surfaces for clues about our world. As adults, they were drawn to formalized arrangements of rocks and minerals: natural history museums and cabinets of curiosities. We Are Made of Time urges viewers to step outside this structure, to consider how geological events millions of years ago connect to us now, how present happenings will echo into the vast expanse of what’s to come. Images of We Are Made of Time are on the Amtrak Media Center.

Amtrak launched Art at Amtrak in June 2022 in New York Penn Station and has since expanded to Moynihan Train Hall, William H. Gray III 30^th Street Station and Washington Union Station. More information about Art at Amtrak and a complete list of artists can be found here.

Amtrak has engaged Debra Simon Art Consulting to curate and produce Art at Amtrak. Simon was Director of Public Art at the Times Square Alliance; created Arts Brookfield, the largest privately funded public art program in the U.S.; and co-founded the River-to-River festival.