3.1 Experimental Clock by using P5.js View the Code

Description

This is an experimental clock that I developed based on New York city view that I am seeing every single day. Through the day light change and time pass, the number of lights that I see through those windows on the building get change. Especially, during the night time, there are a lot of windows with lights on, since a lot of people study or work until really late. The following picture is my inspiration which I can see it every single day through my apartment window.

3.2 Picture from My Apartment (10:00 PM)

Design Process

3.3 Hand-Drew Sketch

I drew three different styles of timing clock that I had in my mind.

1. The 1st one is a spiral that used for keeping mosqitos away from the house. It will slowly burn out throughout the time.
2. The 2nd sketch is a Chinese ancient burning stick. Back in old time, people were using this way to record the time. s
3. The 3rd one is the time changing that the nature provide. It has a visual cue in the sky, which is sun and moon through the day time change. And the lights through the window will also get change through out the day.

At the end I choose the 3rd sketch. I feel this is one of the most natural way that people are having a sense of time, and the number of lights that we can see through the window is also a visual cue for pedistrians to realize the time of the day.
The most difficulty part for me is the color changing portion. I tried to figure it out through several different way, such as for loop, or random generator, or probably using adding/minus for each number. At the end, I applied a possibility on those number and set a beginning and end value for the color of background and sun/moon to let the computer generate a smooth transaction between each color.

Reflection

This is an interesting assignment, which gave me a chance to explore a sense of time. Especially, it made me realize that I was not only timing the day through the number, but also through mutiple different components, such as objects in life, enviromental element changes, daylight differences, and etc. I feel that we can explore more differe ways to represent the thoughts and feeling through our design. In other words, we do not have to limit ourselves within a certain constrains.

Credits

This project background color change is developed based on the following sample code that I found through google.
Sample code for background color change