Sean Caroll calls time "an increment, a definable point, a medium through which we move." Our way of counting time evolved from a relationship to the rotation of our planet and its motion around the sun. Today we measure time by the microwave transition of the cesium atom which is accurate to within a second every 6 million years.
In order to explore relationships between motion and interface I created animations of what I called clocks or time pieces. My first study was a ten minute timer for my midterm review presentation. It was a simple timer that had a vertical format with a ball and a grid of horizontal lines marking every two minutes. I programmed the ball to move from the top to the bottom of the grid in ten minutes, the time allotment for my talk. The falling of the ball past the grid lines showed time passing. I projected this timer on the south wall of the room. During my presentation I called attention to the clock when I talked about visualizing time as flowing data.
Later I concentrated on the idea of creating more varied visual interfaces for time. In the timer projects I looked at time as flowing data by counting increments, adding elements, combining intervals, or creating patterns by using motion in significant sequences. This investigation of time as a constantly flowing data set visualized the flow of time like strings of nows as a primer for thinking about using motion for other types of flowing data. A few short clips are shown in the example video on this page.
motion for interface: a taxonomy; medley of timers by Elaine Froehlich is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.