Design Process

This project conceptually is both interesting and challenging to tackle. Thinking of an "unconventional clock", I immediately thought that it should be free of numbers. Since numbers stood out to me as the most important character of a clock --- it has to be precise, to seconds. I came up with three ideas to represent a clock without using digits or numbers: the first one is very straightforward; just the image of a person sitting on the grass watching the sun and moon rises as time passes by. The second one is using shapes to replace number, and therefore getting rid of that "precision" of a conventionalt clock. The last one mimics the traditional hour glass, where I planned to divide 24 hours into seconds and let the seconds that has passed fall to the bottom of the canvas.

Eventually, I ended up choosing the second design, considering my coding skills and the relative "unconventionality" of this design. When I was drawing in p5.js, I was not happy with the visual of simply three seperate spheres incrasing and decrasing their sizes while spinning. So I made them concentric and overlapping with each other. Then I realized that I can make two different visuals to represent the day and the night. So I added three boxes rotating and overlapping on a color-changing background to represent the day time. Because day time is usually more structured (by external clock like mentioned last lecture), and in the daylight human eyes can perceieve more colors. While the rotating spheres on a black background represent the night time. The spheres rotating appear like disco balls and are more smooth or fluid than the boxes, reflecting more of a personal internal clock. Here is the code to my sketch

Reflection

This experimental clock challenges the obsession with precision of conventional clocks. Instead of viewing time as numbers and digits, this clock explores the literal experience of passage of time. The definition of "hour", "minute", and "seconds" are human-made. What would happen if these definitions become blurry and blend into each other? Would this blur of boundaries introduce a new way to experience "time"?