An abstract alternative to the sun

I like things that are off. Or things that are different. I like to flip things completely, like fantasising about the back of paintings. But I also like things that are off in different ways, like this About Clock that my friend Jasper came up with. To my surprise, when I showed it during a presentation someone from the audience told me that they got a bit nauseous when they looked at it. Doing things differently, flipping things, turning things around, they often lead to new, and unforeseen ideas and results, like people getting sick from a clock. This story is not about making people sick, it’s much bigger. It’s about how a simple idea turned into an abstract alternative to the sun.

Perfectly geometric off clocks

David Krooshof told me about this idea he had for a clock: at the whole hour both hands should point at the hour. This means that the minute hand has to turn 65 minutes in an hour. I wondered what such a clock would look like. It turns out it is an excellent clock. It’s really easy to tell the time on it once you figure out how it works.

What’s so good about it is the logical geometry of it. At the whole hour both hands always point in the same direction. At the half hour the hands always form a long, straight line. At a quarter to, and a quarter past the hands always form a nice 90 degree angle. This is something that always bothered the OCD part of my brain: the timestamps that the hands on a normal clock form a clear geometric angle are completely random. On this off clock, these forms appear on logical moments.

On this particular Off Clock the hour indicators on the clock’s face stay where we expect them, but the minute indicators slowly move along with the hour hand. Of course I wondered what a clock would look like where the hour indicators move, while the minute indicators stay where you expect them.

The other Off Clock

So I made a clock where the hour hand always points up. And on this clock the part of the face where the hours are printed slowly turns. The minute hand turns the way we expect it to turn on a normal clock. This clock shows a similar logical geometry as well. At the whole hour both hands point up, at the half hour they form a long, straight vertical line, and at a quarter to and a quarter past they form a perfect 90 degree angle. It’s a bit harder to see the exact time: you have to look at the turning hour face to see where the hour hand points to.

A nice experiment, good to see what it looks like, but I think it’s less interesting than David’s original idea.

An unexpected Off Clock.

It’s clear that I prefer the first Off Clock. I like the fact that it’s pretty easy to see what time it is, but I also like the fact that quite a lot is going on: (1) When a minute changes, the minute hand moves a bit more than we’re used to. (2) At the same time the minute indicators move a bit as well. (3) And every fifth indicator rotates a little bit in order to stay perfectly level. All these movements are subtle, but visible. I tried to emphasise these movements by making all fifth indicators bigger and over-the-topper:

Not entirely satisfied with the result, I tried a few other ways of emphasising the movement. One of them involved using coloured backgrounds. I really liked the abstract pattern this version creates, so I played around with it some more. I removed the hands of the clock, and I even removed the face, and flipped things a bit. And I aded some hourly, daily and seasonal logic: The hue depends on the hour. Then I decided to let the saturation of the colour depend on the time of the year: high saturation in summer, low in winter. And lightness is influenced by the time of day: at noon it is at its brightest, at midnight it’s at its darkest.

At first it is impossible to see what time it is. But with a little practice — by looking at this clock for a long period of time — you can see patterns emerging. Every hour, even every minute has its own distinctive pattern. You just have to recognise it. If you place this clock in your house and look at it every now and then, after a while you will be able to tell the time, and the season, just like you can tell the time and the season when you look at the sun.

I love these kinds of creative processes where all kinds of unexpected things happen. I never expected David’s idea to turn into such a nice geometric clock that solves an old OCD frustration of mine. And I definitely didn’t expect that with a few iterations this clock would turn into this wonderful, abstract alternative to the sun.