Public space is not just a physical place for social interaction and exposure to nature, but also a platform for an internal journey, where individuals can explore their emotions and thoughts.

This project aims to explore the elements/ interventions/ designs that can encourage self-awareness in public spaces. The result is a small scale prototype that connects a galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor with a resonance speaker attached to a basin, resulting in the vibration of the water surface (cymatics) to visualize the user's emotions.

The GSR sensor captures changes in sweat gland activity that reflects the intensity of an individual's emotional arousal. The resonance speaker, which does not have a diaphragm, is intended to break the limitations of traditional speaker's sound effects. Through experimentation with various water containers, we found that hard, thin materials are the best, and the ideal frequency that can show cymatics effects is subject to the container's size, shape, and type.

As GSR sensor numbers depend on many factors, such as emotions, heart rate, and hydration, the result numbers vary from person to person. Normalizing the number to a specific emotional state is impractical. Instead, the project mapped the GSR sensor's numbers to the prototype's working resonance frequency. The result is a spectrum of an individual's emotional changes, which can be observed in the starting pattern and the shift from more waves to calmer water. The prototype was tested on a small scale, but the project can transform into a public installation where the water vibration distorts the sky reflection in different patterns, allowing passersby to interact collectively.

The project sees the relationship between emotion, nature as a cybernetic system where the action and feedback relation run simultaneously. The machine will complete the loop by way of emotions also affecting nature after nature influences our emotions.

Organic Interface

        Electronic devices have revolutionized the world we live in, and their development has largely relied on inorganic materials such as silicon, copper, and silver. However, these materials are finite and difficult to recycle, leading to toxic waste and expensive production costs. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in using organic materials as an alternative to inorganic materials in electronic devices. Organic materials are cheaper and easier to produce, as well as being more environmentally friendly.

        As a result of this interest, the question arises: what kind of biomaterial is conductive? Through experimentation, it has been discovered that most materials conduct electricity to some extent. Organic materials are conductive due to the presence of water inside them, or if we mixed them with tap water(not distill water). From the experiment, I found a few that remain conductive in dry conditions: Potato Starch, Eggshell compositeand, Agar-Agar.

Considering humans as the invasive species in an environment where the boundary between the visible and invisible dimensions of space no longer exists.

“Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) are found in almost all types of aquatic environments. They consist of a nano-sized crystal of a magnetic iron mineral that is enveloped by a lipid bilayer membrane. In cells of almost all MTB, magnetosomes are organized as a well-ordered chain. The magnetosome chain causes the cell to behave like a motile, miniature compass needle where the cell aligns and swims parallel to magnetic field lines.”

Projection mapping is used to visualize this disturbance in the natural environment. To generate the interaction, we code a script in TouchDesigner that allows clusters of particles to move in relation to a camera that senses human movement in space. Particles are the abstraction of the bacteria moving in the water, their natural movement follow the natural magnetic field. Once humans interact with technology, the particles react, changing their natural flow into new behaviour.

flower.

Wearable Interface

        The project intends to create a medium, tool, and interface which situated between the physical and digital realm. Moving beyond see-point-click interaction, the project uses human whole body as a controller, and the interaction results in arrays of different possibilities from the real-time continuous input.


#mechanic


The mechanism behind the tool is reactiVISion, an open source, cross-platform computer vision framework for the fast and robust tracking of fiducial markers as well as software such as web OBS Studio, Grasshopper Rug OSC, and Droidcam application to connect Grasshopper, ReacTIVision, and Webcam. When scan the marker with camera, the software will return the number of marker’s ID and the position in x y and z in grasshopper in which the script is designed to map them with variables that control characteristic of a digital

Concept and Technicality

This project creates a new temporal system using a Raspberry Pi that connects to WiFi to retrieve various types of data: UTC time, sunrise and sunset times, and personal energy data derived from my Fitbit API using Python. Each clock represents a distinct perspective of time—society, nature, and self—with custom-designed dials engraved on a clear acrylic panel, allowing users to view each dimension of time transparently.

The system is set up in Bash to connect to GitHub and automatically run the program without turning on the GUI. The cloud-derived data is then converted into stepper motor angles and transmitted to an Arduino via a residual communicator. The Arduino controls the stepper motors using C++, resulting in clocks running at different speeds. The new clock necessitates a new cognitive pattern that combines multiple clocks to orchestrate contingent rhythms of an individual's day. The clocks can be customized to meet the individual's needs, and the person can switch between systems if necessary.

Clocks not only measures time but also orchestrates human actions and how we interact with space. Time zones, for example, enable clocks to connect or disconnect us from others. Imagining a new type of clock offers a unique perspective on the world. For instance, if scientists investigating nature do so through animal-time clock— could we discover something new with this new lens on time? Will alternative clocks give rise to new social protocols—such as scheduling school or work schedule according to energy cycles of each individual rather than conventional clock time? The possibilities are endless.Narratives

Time is a culturally constructed concept that is influenced by political and contextual factors. Although the global time system is widely used, it is important to recognize its limitations and the fact that it is not an absolute truth. The accuracy of the global time system is achieved through the averaging and adjustment of time data from atomic clocks across more than 62 countries, which is compiled into Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Occasionally, leap seconds are added to the system, resulting in minutes that are longer than 60 seconds.

Following time measurement, the conversion of time into time zones and adjustment for daylight saving time occur. The delineation of time zones has historically been influenced by economic zones and subject to changes based on political alliances. The most extreme time zones are +14 hours at Line Islands (Kiribati) and -12 hours in and around Baker Islands (US). Therefore, the maximum possible difference between times on Earth is 26 hours.

As time is a human invention, it is possible to design new timepieces and create alternative temporal systems to meet the changing needs of society. With advances in communication technology, a single clock is no longer necessary to synchronize activities, and quantifying previously difficult-to-measure phenomena is now possible through technology. This project advocates for challenging dominant narratives of clock time and exploring new ways of measuring time to better understand the world. Just as different maps are available for different purposes, using different projections into the same space, the same can be done with time.

---

• Bastian, M. (2012). Fatally confused: Telling the time in the midst of ecological crises. Environmental Philosophy, 9(1), 23-48.
• Bastian, M. (2017). Liberating clocks: developing a critical horology to rethink the potential of clock time. New Formations, 92(92), 41-55.
• Birth, K. (2012). Objects of Time: How Things Shape Temporality (Culture, Mind and Society). Palgrave Macmillan.
• Bowler, R., Bach, B., & Pschetz, L. (2022). Exploring Uncertainty in Digital Scheduling, and the Wider Implications of Unrepresented Temporalities in HCI. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: CHI’22.
• Fischer, D., & Lombardi, D. A. (2022). Chronotypes in the US: Influence of longitude position in a time zone. Chronobiology international, 39(3), 460–464.
• Lombardi, M. A. (2017, March). Experts: Time Division into Days, Hours, Minutes.Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-time-division-days-hours-minutes/
• Landes, D. S. (2000) Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World. Belknap Press.
• How we divide time. (n.d.) Royal Museum Greenwich.
  https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/why-12-months-year-seven-days-week-or-60-minutes- hour#:~:text=Our%20use%20of%20the%20seven,visible%20to%20the%20naked%20eye
• Loukissas,Y. (2019). All Data are Local, MIT Press.
• Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (2021, October) Working overtime: NASA's deep space atomic clock completes mission. Physic ORG.

         https://phys.org/news/2021-10-overtime-nasa-deep-space-atomic.html

• Mitchell,A. (2022).Time Has Run Out for the Leap Second. NYTimes. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/science/time-leap-second.html
• Meyer, R. (2015, December). "The Creation of Modern Time." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/the-creation-of-modern-time/421419/
• Nanni, G. (2012). The Colonization of Time. Common Ground Research Networks.
• Odell, J.(2023) Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. Penguin Press.
• Osipovich, A.(2020, December). "High-Frequency Traders Push Closer to Light Speed with Cutting-Edge Cables." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company. https://www.wsj.com/articles/high-frequency-traders-push-closer-to-light-speed-with-cutting-edge-cables-11608028200
• Pschetz, L., Bastian, M., & Speed, C. (2016). Temporal design: looking at time as social coordination. In Proceedings of Proceedings of DRS 2016, Design Research Society 50th Anniversary Conference.
• Pschetz, L. (2021). No futures: Design for a renewed focus on the present. In Working with Time in Qualitative Research (pp. 36-49). Routledge.
• Pschetz, L. (2014). Temporal design: design for a multi-temporal world (Doctoral dissertation, University of Dundee/Edinburgh).
• Pschetz, L., & Bastian, M. (2018). Temporal Design: Rethinking time in design. Design Studies, 56, 169-184.
• Rooney, D.(2021). About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Rosenberg, D.(2010). Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline. Princeton Architectural Press.
• Taylor, S,A. Lindley,S. Regan,T. , David Sweeney, Vlachokyriakos,V. Grainger,L. Lingel,J. 2015. Data-in-Place: Thinking through the Relations Between Data and Community. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2863–2872.
• Tuckman, A. Employment Struggles and the Commodification of Time: Marx and the Analysis of Working Time Flexibility. Philos. of Manag. 5, 47–56 (2005). https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20055221
• Stevenson, A. (2019, June). Google found a clever way to prevent tomorrow's leap second from crashing its computers. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/google-compute-engine-leap-smear-deals-with-61-second-minutes-2015-6