How do you do?: June 2010

NTWICC

So here is how 'Now That's What I Call Cooking' turned out.

These are the final prototype models.

Japanese designer, Che-Wei-Wang has also looked into the concept of alternative methods of communicating time. He says, "Can we watch decay? Can we see glass as a fluid slowly slumping and deforming over time? Everything is in constant flux, yet we consider many things around us static and fixed." It was this idea of decay that I found to be most interesting.

As the previous part of my project had taken place in my kitchen, I realised I was surrounded by decaying materials.

So, I picked an apple. I took a bite and captured an image of this one apple every minute, over an hour. I wanted to question whether the browning of this apple was a method of time keeping that I would feel comfortable with. And, it wasn't. As a timing device, it's subjective, variable. Unreliable.

But I thought there was something quite poetic about this narrative of this one apple at this one time, in this one place. For that one hour, it did keep time. So I turned this narrative into a book, documenting this apple's story. It features removable swatches at the back that track the apples colour over the hour, so, in theory, you could apply it to your own apple.

Measuring Time Through Litres.

(Photo by Tomas Valenzuela Blejer)

Domes-Tick-Tock

Whilst living without clocks, I began to take more notice of how long activities took to complete. I knew how long I took to get ready in the morning, how long my toaster took to perfect my toast. I decided to try applying this to tangible, readable means.

I had timed a range of my kitchen appliances and chose to present this graphically. After using a timeline to connect these time spans, I then singled out individual appliances and documented their range of potential timings. By tagging a toaster or a kettle with this information, I was then able to use these objects as timers in their own rights, removing the need for a standard kitchen timer.

Living by the Clock...

This was perhaps one of the most pivotal parts of my project, my pursuit of Timelordianship.

I kept a diary, wherein I put all my daily activities and consequential observations to specific times. I then flipped the diary, and the rules. I removed all my clocks and continued to keep a diary of my observations as a result of this.

As this had been such a focal point of my process, I wanted to design a way of communicating what I'd learnt to others. As well as a way of allowing them to take part in their own experiment. What resulted was a takeaway booklet that encourages the user to live by the clock for a week, with the potential to then remove their clocks and continue to make observations.

I gave these away at the exhibition, to anyone who seemed interested in my project process.

Or who liked the colour of the paper.