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?Bank of Time?, an online art project created by artist multimedia collective Futurenatural and funded by the Arts Council of England?s New Media Projects fund, was one of the nominees in the Interactive Arts category of the BAFTA Interactive Arts Awards last month.

A free screensaver that saves the time when a computer is not in use, it visualises this by growing plant stocks on the user?s desktop using time lapse photography. To make the plants grow quickly, it must be ?fed? with idle time, by leaving the computer alone as long as possible. Users? idle time is logged on a table at the Bank of Time website, to compare with other users from around the world and see who has been running their screensavers the longest. The project itself demanded an unusually large amount of work for a screensaver, with the basis of its design being a database of over 3,000 photos of plants actually growing over a period of two years ? everything from sunflowers to cannabis. The plant shoot was periodically stricken with natural disasters, such as plants falling over, a plague of red spider mites and vandalism by mice. To download The Bank of Time, go to http://www.thebankoftime.com