Time: Wednesdays 6:30-9:00p
Homework Wiki: http://itp.nyu.edu/varwiki/ClassWork/Time-10
Location: ITP 406
Books: http://delicious.com/cheewee2000/time+books
Articles: http://delicious.com/cheewee2000/time+articles
Videos: http://delicious.com/cheewee2000/time+videos
Links: http://delicious.com/cheewee2000/time
Class Description
The ways we keep time are the ways we are kept. One might argue that humans ideated timekeeping and now we take it for granted. Without clocks we can’t enjoy the benefits of social synchronicity. But with them, we are unwillingly constrained to arbitrary increments that guide our countless decisions. This class uses technology as a way to rethink and recapture the ways we keep time. Over the first half of the semester, we prototype a series of time keeping devices around a set of themes. Blindness, bio-mechanics, materials, space+location, isolation, synchronicity, and collaborative time. Each class begins with the delivery of tools to help construct various types of timepieces along with reviews and discussions. Video, software, motors + mechanisms, electronic signaling and communication tools are covered each week in relation to how they can be used to re-imagine time-keeping. Classes later in the semester are tailored to provide technical and conceptual support for final projects. (Physical Computing, Programming, Mechanisms, Production)
Where did the increment of 24 hours come from? What are the social, human and scientific implications of keeping time with an atomic clock versus an hour glass? How did indigenous tribes of Papua New Guinea use bird-sounds as a means of timekeeping?
Responses to weekly assignments can vary from sketches with descriptions to working prototypes. It is up to you to find out how to communicate your ideas to get the best possible feedback in class. The midterm and final projects can be extensions of a weekly assignment that you’ve chosen. Bring your work to class if you can. All your work is to be documented and posted to your blog with a link back on the classwork wiki page.
Grading:
33% Assignments
33% Class Participation/Attendance
33% Final Project
Syllabus
Week 1
Introduction:
What is time and where did it come from?
Religion, Benedictine Monks, Bells, Gregorian Calendar, etc.
What forms of timekeeping do we use today?
Atomic Time, Time Zones, Astonomical Time
What are the alternatives?
Decimal System (French Revolution Calendar), Biological (biological rhythms, our body, plant growth), Environmental (seasons, currents, tides, temperature, humidity), your own personal ways of keeping time (songs, tv episodes…)
In class: (90 min exercise) brainstorm and sketch for 15 mins and present a clock for the blind. We’ve become accustomed to viewing time or using our eyes to tell time (for those of us who can see). If we removed our sense of sight, what opportunities would it provide to the ways we think of time keeping?
Assignment: prototype your in-class clock for a blind person. Come to class next week with a fully functional proof of concept. How does your clock provide an alternative way reading time? Post a link to your documentation on the Wiki. http://itp.nyu.edu/varwiki/ClassWork/Time-10
Reading: Find and read descriptions of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity and how it relates to time. Describe it in your own words on your blog and post a link to it on the wiki. We’ll go through your descriptions in class. How would you describe it to a 5 year old or your grandmother?
Listen to: “Time.” Radiolab. WNYC. WNYC, New York. 27 June 2007. <http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2005/02/25>
Week 2
Theme: The Body, Chronobiology
What kinds of clocks exist in nature? What kinds of cycles exist in our body?
Sleep cycles, Heartbeat, Hunger, Birds…
How can we sense cycles in nature?
Thermistor clock, Heartbeat Sensor, Blinking sensor, Spectrometer (a dead leaf changing color), Scale, Glucose Level Sensor, Resistance (of decaying organic material)
Tutorial 1: Simple Arduino clock.
Tutorial 2: Simple GSR (http://cwwang.com/2008/04/13/gsr-reader/), Thermistor, Heartbeat Sensor (http://www.johnhenryshammer.com/TEChREF/opAmps/opamps.html)
Assignment: Build a clock based on biomechanics or one of the body’s cycles. By shifting the reference of time away from the Earth’s rotation around the Sun, how can we rethink the time increments we keep to guide our activity?
Reading: Empires of Time Chapter 1 [http://drop.io/timepdfs]
Reading: http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/10/circadian_social_cues_sodium_channel_trafficking.php
Week 3
Theme: Material Flux
Nothing is static. Everything is in constant flux. The wood on the floor is slowly wearing and warping. The filament in the lightbulb is slowly burning away. What kinds of materials can we use to create clocks?
Material creep of steel, shrinkage of wood, expansion of ice, the dripping of asphalt (viscosity of pitch), evaporation of water, resonance,
1: Weight sensitive clock, Pitch Clock, Linear potentiometer [on mouser]
2: AC Sync motors [wikipedia]- How do they work? Where can I get one? Types: 60Hz, 50Hz, Squirrel Cage, non-reversing…
Assignment: Find a material within the context of its embedded or usually invisible relationship to time. evaluate this material and use it to make a clock. Does the material property change over time? Does the material performance change over time? How is the change captured and represented? Is there a moment when the material ruptures or crosses a threshold and fails?
Reading: Clock of the Long Now [drop.io/timepdfs]
Week 4
Theme: The scale of time increments
There are approximately 365.242199 days in a year. But that number is changing…constantly. Atomic clocks count 9,192,631,770 cycles per second of the cesium-133 atoms to maintain a precise second. Time operates differently depending on the scale of the time increment. Our perception of time is often bound by measurements of time that we cannot perceive. How can we reinterpret these out-of-scale increments into increments we can understand?
Tutorial 1: 555 timer lecture posted
[http://cwandt.com/lectures/555_timerlecture.pdf]
feel free to email with questions: taylorlevy[at]gmail!
Tutorial 2: Gears and pulleys
Assignment: build a relational clock that corresponds to a time scale that is not normally perceivable to humans. How can we visualize an imperceivable increment in relation to a perceivable increment?
Reading:http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/time_nist?currentPage=all, http://tf.nist.gov/cesium/fountain.htm, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126941.900-super-clocks-more-accurate-than-time-itself.html?full=true
Week 5
Tutorial 1: Gears and pulleys
Tutorial 2: 3D modeling Intro
Assignment: Take a one of your projects from the previous week and flesh out the details in a new refined prototype for the midterm review.
Reading:http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/28/050228crat_atlarge?
Week 5a
Makeup class
Tutorial 1: 3D modeling Intro
Assignment: Take a one of your projects from the previous week and flesh out the details in a new refined prototype for the midterm review.
Week 6
Tutorial: Fabrication tools and methods
Assignment: Take a one of your projects from the previous week and flesh out the details in a new refined prototype for the midterm review.
Reading: http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/a/a_11/a_11_p/a_11_p_hor/a_11_p_hor.html, http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/30/foer.php
Week 7
Midterm Review
Week 8
Theme: synchronicity + synchronization
10 second game [http://cwandt.com/10sec/]
When is synchronization important? How is it important between 100 people? 2 people? If time only mattered between you and one other person, how would you keep time?
When is a coincidence more than a coincidence? How much synchronization produces synchronicity?
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
Tutorial: AJAX, the switch [cwandt.com/socialSwitch/socialSwitch.zip]
Assignment: synchronous/asynchronous timing. Build a clock that is intended for you and one other person. you can work in pairs for this assignment. in this case, the clock would be for you and partner. or you can work alone and identify/profile the another person and the clock that is for the two of you.
Reading:
Week 9
Theme: time-based media
Video, music, film, photography, television etc. are all built on the foundation of Time. How is our perception of time altered by moving images or sound?
How could time be displayed using vision and motion? How do we translate incremental changes in a series of images?
http://photoslaves.com/open-shutter-by-michael-wesely/
http://filmexperience.blogspot.com/2006/06/24-hour-psycho.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXNT4T56EmM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46UYoM4hsT0&feature=related
Tutorial: Openframeworks Video Clock
for macs
you might also need xcode if you don’t already have it
Assignment: Build a clock using time-based media.
Reading:
Week 10
Theme: consequence
Time, relative to ones lifespan, has become the highest commodity in our current society. We imagine time as “running out” and fear the consequences of an unproductive moment. With this in mind, why is the act of telling time on a daily basis cursory? Our timekeeping devices do not reflect the scarcity of time. When we tell time, nothing is ever at stake. How would our perception of time change if the act of checking the time had a significant consequence? Does time move slower because we are checking time, or do we check the time more often because time seems to be moving slow?
Scratch off Stickers (DIY style)
Gaze Sensor: infrared camera + lots and lots of infrared LEDs + software to detect bright pupil (red eye)
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8773
http://drop.io/ofblinksensorexample#
Assignment: Build a clock that has a consequence to the act of telling time.
Reading:
Week 11
Theme: space and location
We have constructed time-zones for the purpose of social coordination. Time is measurable slower as we reach higher elevations (moving away from Earth’s gravitational pull). How can our position in space inform the ways we keep time? What good is a 12 hour watch on the International Space Station? A light year measures distance with time. Can we measure time with a distance?
Time Travel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel
Prediction
http://www.sensenetworks.com/macrosense.php
http://www.gapminder.org/
Memory
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/06/08
Choice
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/07/22
Assignment: Final Projects
Week 12
Workshop
Week 13
Final Review