Experimental Clock

Description

This piece is named ephemeral, referencing the transitory nature of time in our memories, in contrast to the very unfaltering nature of our clocks and of time in the universe. Each dot represents a quanta of time of varying proportions. Unlike the relentless march of a clock, these dots squish and swirl, retract and stop, accelerate and deccelerate. But, eventually, they all end up completing their revolutions in more or less the same time as always. The off-blue color of the background represents a faded cosmos. It is also reminiscent of the brilliant cobalt wall-paintings of the previous decades, now long faded.

You could at any time, take a second to pause and stare at this 'clock' to notice the 3 slightly larger, grey squished dots within the swirling mass to know the actual time. This too however breaks its mould every now and then and sways a bit from its traditional position.

The editor to the code is available here

Design Process

My initial idea was to represent the now-default use of computer chips to keep track of time. I iterated on the idea of representing the seconds of a clock in binary, juxtaposed with the 'tick-tock' of an old grandfathers clock. While I could see a lot of potential in this idea, I felt none of my executions did enough justice to the idea and so decided to go another way.

As always, I went back to music for my inspiration. I really enjoyed the visual imagery the title of Jim Croce's Time In A Bottle generated. This image, along with the ever changing galaxy discs inspired me to represent time as blobs in space interacting with other blobs around while rotating an unseen centre.

Reflection

Designing an unconventional clock has made me reflect on the ways I perceive time. From the ways we use to keep track of time, to the ways the universe operates. While brainstorming for ideas, I had the opportunity to look at time from perspectives I hadn't. This allowed me to come up with the idea of this representation of time.

Credits

This project was inspired by Jim Croce's Time in a bottle. Image credit of the spinning galaxy: Wikimedia Commons user Ingo Berg, turned into a GIF by Forbes staff.