"Joyas Voladoras" by Brian Doyle
Friday, 15 April 2011
Joyas Voladoras
"Joyas Voladoras" by Brian Doyle
Friday, 4 March 2011
the three final briefs
1. Pragmatic VS Poetic: It's good to experiment with both numbers and qualities of time, but this may at the end confuse my user. At the moment I've barely started prototyping yet and so would not rule out my pragmatic ideas completely, but use them as a background to developing behind the scenes detailing of possible outcomes.
2. Forget about the Day. Focus on ongoing timeframes. Imagine if you were to take this project into space where the day can no longer be defined by 24 hours. How would this project be able to adapt to this change? Afterall, my project is about opposing the standardized notions of time completely.
3. What is your aim at the end of the project?
From these pointers I've reviewed my 3 briefs:
Brief 1: Biological Time
This time is recorded by your heartrate. A device will be flashing and indicating your heartrate, whilst in the background it logs the data of your pulse. This data is then translated into a graphic.. kind of like a modern ECG that is plotted on endless time, pointing out events from your everday which caused the increases or decreases of heartrate. This is more an accumulation of time.. the longer the user puts this object to use, the more complex the graphic becomes. The object itself will look like an LED heart that flashes in relation to your heartbeat. Possibilities include: the flashing light itself wearing out over time, and requiring the user to "recharge" it (still unsure by what)
Brief 2: Emotional Time
This time is meant to play with the notion of memory and time. This object will represent how memory seemingly exists in our mind as something that has been afixed by ourselves. When infact, each time we revisit a memory, it somehow changes. A single sentence, repeated in the mind several times, can bring different meanings and evoke different emotions everytime. This object captures a memory, however over time will start to evolve everytime the user visits it. Like a memory you want to hold on to, but the harder you try, the less "genuine" it becomes.
Brief 3: Comparative Time
This time is not meant to be controlled. It is not meant to be recorded and it is not meant to tell the future. What it does is it represents the natural flow of time. Time does not wait. Time does not rush. It comes and goes as it wishes and although its variables may change, it keeps moving. This object will contain a set of parameters that allow a free formation of what would become of the object itself.
At the end of this project, I'd like to design a manifesto. This is a manifesto that speaks through my objects and through a narrative medium (film or book) about the endless possibilities of what time could be.
Friday, 28 January 2011
the modern time-keeper
BA(Hons) Design final year dissertation:
My dissertation investigates and questions the modern approach of timekeeping. Its aim was to trace the roots of what time is. Divided into three sections, it conjures how the meanings of time can run in parallel:
60 seconds investigates how in the modern society, time is the ultimate ruler whereby systematic timekeeping has imposed a form of tyranny on society by forcing our surrender to the authority of the clock. The following two chapters are the counter arguments of our modern notion of time and is the inspiration of my project so far.
15 breaths explores the theories of time, comparing and contrasting the theories of relativity, time as an internal instinct and time as a learnt memory.
65 heartbeats explores the book Einstein’s Dreams which narrates the portrayal of the nature of time other than the number on the clock in 30 different worlds.
Sunday, 9 January 2011
what's the walking speed of your city?
I came across an interesting article by the NewScientist which discusses the "walking speed" of some of the top cities of the world. People from 32 countries were timed walking a length of 18m. To my surprise, London is ranked at top 12 only, at 12.17secs. ... Hong Kong wasn't even a candidate but I believe it would've made a tie with Taipei at number 23, with 14secs.
While writing my dissertation, I've tried to retrace my roots in my interest in the topic of "Time". Having briefly discussed this during one of the mentoring sessions last term, I realized that my sensitivity to Time probably originated from having lived in two different countries. Having been away from Hong Kong for the past 3 years (although with visits back home for 6-10 weeks/year), I've really come to notice the difference in speed in different cultures.
London may have the 12th fastest walking pace in the world, but it doesn't necessarily mean the city itself functions at the same rate. In fact, I realized that my walking pace does increase in London compared to when I'm in Hong Kong. And yet I still feel that Hong Kong functions so much faster. Whether it is transportation, service or simply immediate gratification of your demands... Hong Kong is truly unbeatable!
(original article on "walking speed":
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/labels/walk.html)
Tuesday, 28 December 2010
Many people would say London is incredible... life is on high-speed and things can't be done any quicker, you can't get from one place to the other any faster.. and when I tell them that actually, London only really functions at what I would say around 70% of the speed of Hong Kong they look at me as if I'm completely out of my mind. Truth is, London was relatively slow for me when I first moved there. I couldn't believe how long I had to wait for buses, how long it took for my food to arrive, how long it took to pay for something. But it seems like I've slowly grown accustomed to the speed, slowly adapted to having more patience.
Now that I'm back at home I realize how serious this high-speed syndrome actually is. The day I arrived in Hong Kong, I was again amazed at the time it took for me to land, get off the plane, get through customs and reach the baggage hall. Normally this would take around 10 to 20 minutes depending on where the gate was. I reached the baggage hall well within 15 minutes and expected to be leaving with my baggage in the next 10 minutes or so. When I reached the conveyor belt, there was already a sign saying "BA27- Baggage delays due to technical problems. We apologize for any inconveniences caused". Compared to my nightmare in heathrow 5 days ago when I waited with no announcements at all for 10 hours for my "delayed" flight which never even happened at the end, this was literally like heaven. It took the airport staff less than 10 minutes to get their act together and inform passengers of the delay.. of their BAGGAGES.
10 minutes passed and the conveyor belt was still empty. An announcement about baggage delays was made soon after but people were already starting to get impatient. Eventually after almost an hour of waiting, we were informed that they are still having problems and that we should leave our contacts and the baggages would be sent to us to our home address. I thought to myself... well, luckily I have most of what I need either on me or at home anyway.. so a week without my baggage should be fine. It was then that I overheard one of the airport staff telling passengers that their luggage should be sent to them by midnight or tomorrow morning at the latest. I was so surprised I thought I heard the wrong thing. If this were London, my baggages would get to me in 2 weeks if I were lucky. So I happily filled in my details and left the airport, feeling blessed that I'm home again at the worlds most efficient city. But actually, this was just the beginning. As everyone knows about BA, there's always a delay with them. Flights, baggage, whatever. So although they said they'd deliver by midnight or the next morning, everyone doubted it would actually happen. And it didn't.. my baggage arrived around 30 hours after my arrival. But during those 30 hours, my mum was constantly calling BA to ask when my baggage would be arriving and my dad was constantly complaining about their poor management. This whole situation even managed to get itself on the news where people complained that their baggage weren't delivered to them within the expected time frame! I almost couldn't believe it... whether Hong Kong has evolved into some insatiable and spoilt city or whether I have just regressed and expected less out of this so-called "efficiency" of a city.. I'm not sure.
But this whole personal experience has made me think about what I would like to write for my contextual report. Thinking about the 24-hour society, how has this made an impact on lifestyles and consequently on design itself? Has the development of the 24-hour society been the outcome of human's never-ending demands and is design feeding this act of over-demanding and over-consuming lifestyle?
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
Friday, 26 November 2010
4 mini briefs
-ways of showing time in slow motion and in fast forward. go for extremes
-personal experiences of how different countries/nations perceive time: Hong Kong, London, Munich, Taipei
-possible medium: film?
“Clocks and watches are now far more accurate than we need them to be in our daily lives... Perhaps this need to be in possession of the exact time reflects some fault in our perception of the world, and a defect in our grasp of space-time. Obsessive attention to microscopic detail is usually a symptom of underlying neurosis. Confident people carry neither money nor watches, and expect the world to keep time with them.”
- JG Ballard
2. Einstein's Dreams
-designing 30 objects that can work as time measuring devices in these 30 different worlds
3. Time frames
-further exploring the use of photography as a medium for capturing time frames for different people
-disposable camera that can be rewound and reused
-find 2 people with different relationships:
eg. 2 people who are in the same career, family members living in different parts of the world,
4. Ways of physically capturing time
-further development of roses immersed in resin