“When I first started on this project, I thought it would become a public art piece,” Marclay said. “I thought, What a great thing, to be in a train station waiting for a train and being able to watch a movie. It would inform you what time it was, and at the same time entertain you. But I realized it was impossible—there’s lighting issues, sound issues, you have to hear the public-address system. And Grand Central, for example, closes for a few hours, late at night, when they clean up the place. Then there’s the occasional nudity and swearing. How do you show that at Grand Central? And then you start censoring yourself, and you can’t do it.” But there was a more important reason that the video needed to exert a tyrannical hold in a dark gallery. Shown amid other distractions, it became an ambient object: just another clock.

The original meaning of the adjective profane (Latin: "in front of", "outside the temple") referred to items not belonging to the church, e.g. "The fort is the oldest profane building in the town, but the local monastery is older, and is the oldest building," or "besides designing churches, he also designed many profane buildings".

As a result, "profane" and "profanity" has therefore come to describe a word, expression, gesture, or other social behavior which is socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rudeness, vulgarism, desecrating, or showing disrespect. Other words commonly used to describe profane language or its use include: cuss, curse, pejorative language, swearing, expletive, oath, bad word, dirty word, strong language, irreverent language, obscenity language, choice words, blasphemy language, foul language, and bad or adult language. In many cultures it is less profane for an adult to curse than it is for a child, who may be reprimanded for cursing.