Design Challenge
Create an animation that shows a clock for aliens. The clock cannot display time tied to the rotation of the Earth - years, months, days, hours, minutes, etc. Instead create your own system of time - however large or small. If the clock is no longer tied to celestial movement - how else can you express the passing of time? Would the time be continuous or discrete? Cyclical or unidirectional? How would you divide it into sub-elements and what visual tools would you use to represent distinctions: color, shape, size, order?
Project Scope:
Use arrays and loops
Use rotation with the transformation matrix
Use either trigonometric functions or intervals (or both if need be)
Design Exploration
I started the ideation process in my design notebook. Some of the thoughts that first came to mind were creating a time system based on autonomic body functions, such as heartbeats or blood flow. I then landed on sound waves, which intrigued me because I felt there was a rhythmic function to it, but also a way to visually represent intervals of time through wave forms.
I decided to use frequency as my time measure, where high frequencies would represent short periods of time, and low frequencies would represent long periods of time.
After further consideration, I moved away from the idea of a “sound” wave, but rather just vibrational frequencies generated by the planet itself which communicated to the aliens a certain duration of time. Based on feedback I received after sharing my idea, it was suggested that what I was trying to track was the time between earthquakes. This gave me the idea of using a seismograph to visually represent the passage of time in my new planet.
Alien Clock Visual Representation
I started off by coding a seismograph (thanks to the help of chatgpt):
After initial review from my professor, I realized the code was using noise to generate the waves, this meant that the intervals where random. Unfortunately, that would not work for a clock, which you need consistency to be able to accurately tell time. Repetition of events. I edited the code to generate consistent patterns in the wave forms, and I also got rid of the line going through the seismograph (that indicated the middle), solely for aesthetic purposes:
Once I had a solid base, I began to experiment with color. High frequencies would be represented by bright colors, and lower frequencies would be represented by darker colors:
I was happy with the color variation and the consistency of the waves, but I wanted the design to be more visually interesting. I increased the amplitude of the wave so that it would occupy the entire height of the sketch and played around with the stroke weight. I also changed the color mode to HSB since I was manipulating the brightness, and decided I wanted to use pastel colors. The final change I made was to the background, the plain white background seemed sterile, so I made the background change opposite to the wave color, using the same color parameters.
Alien Clock Final Code
Reflection
It was really challenging to come up with a concept for a clock that was not tied to rotation of the earth of other celestial entities. Once I figured out a direction, I felt intimidated with the initiation of the code for the visual representation. Once I had the seismograph created, I had fun playing around with slight changes in frequency, color, stroke weights, and the background. This project solidified my approach to code so far, I want the process to be fun and driven by exploration. The final sketch is funky and playful with the interchanging colors between the wave and the background. My final goal was to create something I would enjoy looking at, and I think I accomplished that with the visual aesthetic.