Project 1

Build a Cool Clock

From the central heartbeat of the central processor, to the timestamping of files and blog entries, to ever present clock displays, time is a fundamental feature of computation. It is OK to consider large temporal scales (e.g. seasons), but smaller temporal scales should also be displayed (or be available to be displayed, perhaps as a function of user input). You may make use of mouse input if you wish.

Due: Monday, September 29

Clock Examples:

• In the Processing examples menu: File->Examples->Basics->Input>Milliseconds. The idea in both cases is to procedurally generate a kinetic abstract image where the dynamic changes are linked to time. From the point of view of this assignment, the milliseconds example is quite weak: it doesn't give a sense of the passage of time in multiple scales; the changing grayscale bars aren't connected to any intuitive, experiential sense of time passing.
• Industrious Clock. The idea is to re-present the standard, numeric presentation of time in a non-traditional medium (video representations of paper and pencil).
• Maeda's Clocks. A quicktime video of several screen-based clocks developed by designer John Maeda. The conceptual strategy employed in this series of clocks is to visually redesign standard hands or numeric representations of time.
• Ben Bogart's Clock. Ben uses overdraw to visually update the greyscale of the drawing area.
• Jack Stockholm's Sine Clock Jack slices the screen into horizontal strips and draws a sine wave per time division (Hours, minutes).

Of course, your own design shouldn't be too similar to any of these examples.