Solar-timepiece

  1. In your blog post, embed at least two images of your clock, showing what it looks like or how it behaves at different times of day. If your clock involves animation, embed an animated GIF or a brief video recording, which you can make with the OpenProcessing screen-recording feature.

(day version: when mouse hovers over center)

(night version: another minute)

https://openprocessing.org/sketch/1472355

The idea for my project stems from the concept of psychological time—how we each experience time differently when watching youtube compared to listening to a boring podcast. Hence, it was my goal to experiment with the movement of circles that move at different speeds and follow different paths (representative of how we experience time differently) but still operate according to the standard time (hours, minutes, and seconds). The outer circles move according to the hour’s hand, aligning every minute. The number of outer rings with which the circles reflect the number of minutes passed in the hour. Hence, when the moving circles align with each other, the rings will experience a shift to welcome the new minute. The inner circles more clearly present the minute hand, with the same workings of the circles that represent the hour hand. When the viewer hovers their mouse over the very inner circle, the surrounding circles will start rotating at a constant angle. I did so to actively demonstrate the interruption of our personal experience with time whenever we check the clock. Finally, the colors of the clock become more monotoned and dormant when it is nighttime.

It was a challenge to find a method for the circles to move at different speeds but still manage to align at a certain time. I also had many ideas that I wanted to experiment with and found it difficult to narrow them down. At the same time, it was difficult to figure out what I could accomplish with p5js given my skills and the time that I have. However, I am happy with how my project turned out as I did a few trials which helped lead the direction to how I wanted my timepiece to look. I’m glad the circles were able to sync nicely and thus able to successfully visualize my concept.