Scott Thrift

Scott Thrift (b. 1973, Winston Salem, NC)  is a media artist and designer who explores how we perceive and experience time. For over a decade, he worked in the rhythm of cuts and storytelling as a filmmaker and co-founder of the multi-award-winning production company m ss ng p eces. His work took him to six continents, documenting design processes and telling stories about the shifting nature of human experience.

Crafting films—bending, stretching, and compressing time—gave him an intimate relationship with the meaning of a moment. But it also revealed a hidden truth about time: the way we measure the moment may limit our capacity to experience it.

Measured second by second, the present moment becomes a hairline fracture between the past and the future, never lasting long enough to matter. This realization led Thrift to the question: “How can we live in the moment if the moment changes every second?”

In 2012, Thrift founded The Present to reframe how we measure the moment. The result is a trio of long-lasting, kinetic sculptures that reveal the nature of time our industrial clocks leave out: a truly abundant day, the gentle consistency of the lunar cycle, and the embedded wisdom of seasonal continuity.