thread of alt calendars and new time machines

people are experimenting with unusual ways of keeping time as the one-size-fits-all industrial schedule loses steam

Circa Solar by @_ted_hunt — a watch that fluctuates with the rhythm of the sun and seasons, includes a clever Mystery of Night feature where the hour hand disappears into the darkness to “enhance an appreciation of unknowing”

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1289884842/circasolar

When Am I? — thesis project in which @AbolTaabol designed a clock replacement using the smart lamp in his room

he mapped the color change to the time of his rituals instead of the sun’s position in the sky

e.g. yellow → purple = “stop work & read”

https://itp.nyu.edu/thesis2020/students/arnab-chakravarty

In Search of Personal Time — a group of artists built personal timekeepers that are initialized by users pressing down a button for how long they think a minute lasts

your “perceptual minute” could be way longer or shorter than 1 minute in Universal Time

http://i-s-o-p-t.com/ 

time maps designed by @elzr — worksheets that help people annotate and reflect on larger blocks of time, a cross between a calendar and a journal https://twitter.com/elzr/status/1174753806774652928

calendars as tools 4 thought — @devonzuegel’s system for using her schedule as a lightweight diary and “scaffolding for a memory palace”. events create anchors in your mind that help you recall other deets https://twitter.com/devonzuegel/status/1148997443574480898

Calendar Collective by @kalyani21 — a series of alt calendars + a playlist of voicemails that demonstrate what it sounds like to reference new clocks in conversation

e.g. “my vacation lasted a waxing crescent” or “i should be there before it turns green”

https://parsons.edu/dt/calendar-collective/

a proposal to replace calendar grids with circular rings—reminds me of my fav quote about time:

„Time is one spreading ring wrapped around another, outward and outward until the thinnest skin of Now depends for its being on the enormous mass of everything that has already died” https://twitter.com/aardvarsk/status/1194757687247982592

New Time Machines Working Group — a collective created by @keikreutler that treats time design as a political project

„Perhaps one theory of change lies in a transformation of the quality of time: not whether, but which, and whose, watches we consult”

https://www.ourmachine.net/writing/new-time-machines/