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This is #1 of 3 short videos by artist David Shein touring and explaining his exhibition of clocks at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation.

Has anything ordinary ever caught your eye? We live in a world of things made to get our attention. Flashy jewelry. Conspicuous cars. Attention-getting clothing. This exhibit is about looking beyond.

Visual appeal is drawn from objects designed and built for function. Inspired by a wall of clocks on display in a store, I envisioned reusing gauges from junk automobiles and discarded gears from bicycles to create the unique clocks and sculptures on display here.

Bicycles: Precision manufacturing and functional touches are visible. Perfectly organized teeth. Holes engineered to minimize weight and maximize strength. Slight depressions along the gear edge to grip the chain during gear changes. Embossed numbers to inform the bike mechanic. Wear is also present on many of the parts.

Automobiles: We rely on the gauges when we are behind the wheel, yet we rarely give second thought to their appearance. The font, the color of the gauge, the design of the needle. Contrast the simplicity of a large round gauge with E and F markings from a Chevy truck versus the complexity of a combined tachometer plus MPG gauge of a BMW.

My advice: look closely. Art is about the viewer. What do you see? What elements catch your attention? Would you recognize the gears of your bike? The gauges of your car?

— David Shein