Time: Project Ideas

A few ideas for “clocks” of various sorts:

  1. A digital face of a clock that takes the length of a minute to render the current time to the screen, and then erases itself upon completion, and then begins to render the next minute. Inspired by this actual piece in the Rijksmuseum:

  2. Email alert for when 98% percent of your body has been replaced by new atoms (from the time that you set up the alert). Based on Atomic Tune-Up: How the Body Rejuvenates Itself, and of course, the Ship of Theseus.

  3. Camera interaction to “slow down” time: as you move further to your webcam, the displayed time begins to show milliseconds, giving the impression that time is incrementing very quickly. As you move closer to the webcam, time will increment in seconds, creating the impression it is slowing down.

  4. Data visualization of GPS satellites, with explainer of how the atomic clocks on board help provide you with accurate GPS coordinates.

  5. Heartbeat Clock: displays the lifespans of different species as a empty bar that fills up at a rate dependent on the heartbeat of that species.

  6. Interstaller (The Movie) Mission Calculator: how old is your teammate if they’re orbitting your planet, on other planets, etc.

A final astronomical instrument:

For my current role at the Lower East Side Girls Club, I’m working on adding new interfaces to AMNH’s space data visualization program, Open Space. For Time, I’d like to add feature to Open Space that would allow you to manipulate a (physical) clock interface to move along “in time” in the program. Also, I’d also like to render the Zodiac constellations one by one as time progresses in the program.