Tag: environment

Circadian clock

I created a light and night clock (the needle has a 360 degree rotation during sunlight and another revolution during nighttime), seeking to encourage a wider environmental awareness and to reshape everyday behaviours. It emphasises that we are part of nature with a natural cycle and that we don’t listen anymore in the modern way of living. This project aims to coordinate ourselves in a more adequate way, weaving ‘human time’ with ‘environmental time’, particularly important in the current context of environmental and social crisis.
 

 

I created two different face of the clock, one in plywood for indoor public places and mirror acrylic one for outdoor.
 
DSC09935
 
From the study “Time Flies” I found that there is little chance to interfere in private life or modify routine. By using public spaces and in-between places I can engage stakeholders. Urban installations exhibiting objective data have the potential to elicit reflection, change or action, playing a critical role in the construction and reflection of social behaviour  (Claes & Vande Moere, 2013; Galloway, 2004).
 
The image engraved on the clocks are drawings of lace lichen. They are one of the most documented bio-indicators. Usually growing on Oak tree, their diversity correlates directly with air quality and human health. It is view as the symbol of  wisdom of time, an evolving barometer of climatic change, a biological indicator (Bardell, Bucknum, & Howe, 2012).
 
DSC09900
 
The clock is composed of a stepper motor of 200 steps, an Arduino YUN, a motor shield, a battery pack and a NeoPixel Ring. It is connected to the WIFI and will be able to geo-localise itself in the future. For now the location is given to the program, then from this information, it gets the time of sunrise, sunset and the actual clock time from the online data base. The rate of each step is calculated depending of the length of day light or night, allowing the needle to do 360 degrees in day time and the same in night time. The user will be able to see when looking at the clock if there is more or less of the day remaining with light in comparison with what already passed.
 

 

Sources:

Bardell, F., Bucknum, B., & Howe, B. (2012). Wired Wilderness.   Retrieved 25/03/15, from https://climateclock.wordpress.com/residency-finalists/wired-wilderness/

Claes, S., & Vande Moere, A. (2013). Street infographics: raising awareness of local issues through a situated urban visualization. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 2nd ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays.

 

3 cogs clock idea

Instead of putting forward the disaster we produce, I decided to find a way to reemphasise the fact that we are part of the nature we destroy. From that I am hopping to make people remember that our action on ecosystem have a direct impact on human life.

 


 

From this statement, I got the idea to show this inextricable link we have with nature by showing that our rhythm are interconnected. I wanted to build a clock made with 3 cogs: the gear driver would make turn the arm representative of the ‘planet’; making turn a transitional one (to make the two other turn on the same direction), making turn a third one with an arm for ‘human’. The challenges were to find data which would give me a duration of the cycle of a natural resource in nature and compare it with a cycle in  human body, allowing me to determine the speed and the number of teeth for each cog. The message I wanted to foster was that humans, like nature, have inner clocks, and each component of our body is regulated by cycle: blood in our vein, heart beat, water and oxygen coming in and out in a cycle. Moreover the underline message was that if the gear driver stop (the planet one), the human gear will stop too. I choose water again for the same reason as previously and I investigate the time it stay in the body, the duration it takes to be fully assimilated… I researched the same for plants and trees, looking at the cycle from assimilation to transpiration. I also looked into the cycle of water and the time it stay in rivers, atmosphere, seas… The issue was that all the data I found was approximative and depend on the person, on the tree, the climate condition. Too many parameters had to be considered for each calculation, which made impossible to get a precise universal duration and rhythm which would have make sense to link human and nature. Therefore, this idea did not succeeded, however it made me start researching around the concept of time. I knew the answer was to find an alternative way of conveying a sense of time which would revive the connection between humans and nature.