Hand Written Clock

a3buster writes "This clock does not actually have a man inside, but a flatscreen that plays a 24-hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."

Re:Ummm...

[Tubal-Cain]

That's why it's in Idle.

Re:

[clone53421]

That must be why it’s in Idle...

Re:

[Monkeedude1212]

Well then I wonder how Idle made front page.

Re:Ummm...

[Spazztastic]

Well then I wonder how Idle made front page.

Adjust your Slashdot homepage to not include Idle, then.

Re:

[robertc5]

You know you can edit your preferences to not show idle "news" items.

It's the America's Top Idle, of course!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't look in the idle section then. I like these posts because they are entertaining and give me something to read on slow news days.

Re:

[ddillman]

True enough, but the title did at least claim "Idle".

Re:Creepy

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Not to worry. He comes out. At night. And watches you sleep. When he can see that your breathing is deep and even, he collects your tears with a thin glass needle.

Re:Creepy

[Looce]

A thin hand drawn glass needle.

Re:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Drawing thin glass needles by hand is hard.

With the right tools [sutter.com], though, you can reliably produce glass needles fine enough to sample the contents of a single cell.(Or, presumably, sample your tears right through your eyelid without alerting you.)

Re:

[irp]

Drawing thin glass needles by hand is hard.

With the right tools [sutter.com], though, you can reliably produce glass needles fine enough to sample the contents of a single cell.(Or, presumably, sample your tears right through your eyelid without alerting you.)

I couldn't decide whether to mod you Informative or Funny. Modding you Funny would have been Redundant, but Informative would have been really Funny...

In the end I realized: I'm at work! I don't have time for this!

Re:

[flydpnkrtn]

Do not fear me gypsy.... I only come for your tears...

Re:

[mangu]

He comes out. At night. And watches you sleep.

Funny, that's exactly what my cat [imgur.com] does

24 hours?

[MattSausage]

Also, I would imagine he only painstakingly did this for 12 hours, no need for 24

Re:

[Monkeedude1212]

Unless he DID do it for 24 hours, as in, what you see at 1 O'clock (and 1:01, and 1:02... etc) has 2 different possibilities or occurances.

Re:

[MattSausage]

Should that be the case: Then THAT, my friend, is ART!

Re:

[neiko]

Of course...there's no question that he COULD have done it for 24. I could reply to your post saying that he might have done it for 34 hours, but it's still not worth posting.

Re:

[MattSausage]

But wait.. what if he did do it for 34 hours by manipulating the clock he was watching and copying to move at 70.5% normal speed, then sped his video up to complete in exactly 24 hours? Holy smokes! I am an ARTISTE! (Mainly because I took his idea, your idea, and put them together, so now I can claim it was all my idea). ART!!!

Re:

[donkey55b]

1 hour... he only needed to do it for 1 hour. Think it through. I don't think I need to explain how. In fact, I'm pretty sure he only did one hour.

Re:

[bar-agent]

1 hour... he only needed to do it for 1 hour.

No. You notice how he cleaned up around the minute hand? Specifically, how he cleaned the juncture between the minute hand and hour hand? If the hour hand were in a different position, he wouldn't have been able to do that and keep the illusion.

Re:

[Jojoba86]

I think you mean 1 hour and 5 minutes. But then he'd be upside-down at 6:00!

Re:

[iamhassi]

"Think it through. I don't think I need to explain how."

Actually I think you need to think it through and an explanation on how he could do all 12 hours by just doing 1 hour is necessary.

My question is when does the next minute begin? When he finishes cleaning everything off or when he begins wiping it off? I'd probably buy this if they offered it as a computer program and set it up on a tablet inside a box.

Re:

[orlanz]

12 hours, 24 hours - talk about having too much time on your hand.

I like...

[msauve]

this one [yugop.com] better.

Re:

[JWSmythe]

    Ya, I like this one a lot better too. It would have been fun to see with a microtime counter on it. :)

Re:I like...

[Kesch]

While the Industrious Clock is probably a better "hand-drawn" timekeeper, I'd say the real draw of this is not just the clock face, but the entire mounting in a man sized box with the clock sunken. It then truly looks like you have kidnapped someone, shoved them into a box, and forced them to keep time with whiteboard markers. I'd like to see a pocket watch version with a tiny demon inside.

I want one of these

[oldspewey]

I have the perfect spot already picked out.

Re:

[clone53421]

...The bathroom, for the most creepy effect.

Re:

[clone53421]

I'm going to put 1 of them over my bed.

...and never have sex again!

Oh wait, this is Slashdot. Never mind.

Hey

[Locke2005]

That's only a 1 minute 27 second segment... where's the link to the full 24-hour video? (And wouldn't looping it every 12 hours be just as effective?)

Re:

[Culture20]

He's not an engineer. He's an artist. Effectiveness is the least determinant. Evocativeness is the primary.

Re:

[jfengel]

1:27 is all you need. He draws a minute hand. He waits a minute. He erases it, then draws another one.

It's tedious enough as it is. I can't imagine anybody watching more than two minutes, much less the full twelve hours.

The full video would be useful only for the actual clock installation, which is more novelty act than clock. And for what it's worth, it's his. You want yours, make your own.

I could do it in half the time

[argStyopa]

Wouldn't it make more sense just to do it for TWELVE hours and maybe loop it 2x per day?

Re:

[JWSmythe]

Without seeing the whole thing, you don't know what he did. For all we know, he only did 60 minutes, and 12 hours (60 one minute videos, and 12 more for the movement of the hour hand). It would seem insane to do every single one of the 720 one minute videos.

I rewatched it, and there's a break at about 53 seconds, where the camera is off to the side, so you can't see if there's a cut between shots.

If I were doing it, I'd have done the 72 video method, and even have some extras

Re:

[rantingkitten]

But he's not doing this for efficiency. It's supposed to art, and maybe he felt it wouldn't be complete without each hand position actually being drawn individually. That said, I have no idea if he took a shortcut like you suggested. Just saying, artists think quite differently from engineers sometimes.

Re:

[JWSmythe]

    I know. He probably liked the art of every single movement being different. :) I'd like to see it, so I could analyze how he did it, and see if he took any shortcuts. If I did it, I definitely would have cheated it a bit. :)

Re:

[iamhassi]

"I rewatched it, and there's a break at about 53 seconds, where the camera is off to the side, so you can't see if there's a cut between shots...If I were doing it, I'd have done the 72 video method, and even have some extras, like where he was cleaning the clock face to fill time randomly."

Agreed. Someone could probably do the entire video in a hour or two, then edit it all together, along with the cleaning fillers. All you have to do is draw the minute, then loop him cleaning back and forth for the r

Re:

[Darinbob]

And at 12:23 pm, he eats a sandwich.

Re:

[2names]

Wouldn't it make even more sense to just buy a damn clock?

Re:

[Svartalf]

It would...but then it wouldn't be art...

Re:

[bobsledbob]

Thus, why it's called art.

Re:

[mafian911]

Looks nice? Art doesn't have to be aesthetically pleasing to be called art. Art is creativity. Art is about making you think. This is not only a very creative piece of work, but it also required quite a bit of dedication to complete.

If anything, the theme of this very piece may be dedication. Or it could be monotony. Or tedium. Or simplicity, given the featureless form of the clock, and the apparent lack of mechanical parts (which, obviously, is only an illusion).

The rationale for this piece could be

Digital version too...

[chico_the_chihuahua]

The Japanese artist Yugo Nakamura designed a piece with a similar theme... in digital! [yugop.com]

It's funny how analog time is glacially slow and digital time is totally manic.

Where's the repository?

[otis wildflower]

Where can I apt-get / yum / emerge / pkg / etc. that application from?

Looks interesting...

Re:Where's the repository?

[SEWilco]

It's an open hardware project. Most people can build one, but it takes 9 months to download the basic hardware. Programming it takes years.

Wrong

[electricbern]

The clock is wrong. I wonder if it is due to daylight saving time.

Hex Clock is much cooler

[arrogance]

The hex clock is WAY cooler than this. And less creepy.

http://www.intuitor.com/hex/hexclock.html [intuitor.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal_time [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[JWSmythe]

    Those remind me of something I did a long time ago. I wasn't aware of "Decimal time", but it seemed to make sense to make a base10 time. I wrote a little program that would show the localtime and UTC both natively, and converted to decimal time live. It was interesting to look at for a little while, but served no purpose since no one else used it. :)

Re:

[Scutter]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time [wikipedia.org]

Makes more sense, easier to learn and convert in your head, and failed completely for the same reasons that hex time would fail.

Would be more impressive...

[aicrules]

...if he included a second hand.

Hand drawn clock thing too far.

[tjstork]

There's been much cooler and more concise hand drawn clocks out there. This one takes a clever idea too far. Now it is annoying. I hate this clock.

Video not playing?

[Smivs]

This won't play for me. If you've got the same problem go here [youtube.com]

I want an attractive digital display

[peter303]

I am amazed that most digital watches still use the same crappy seven-segment LED-displays from thirty years ago. I've look in vain for more attractive numerals, e.g. Times-Romain. Even the high-end digital watches (over $100) use crappy seven-segment numbers.

Re:

[goofy183]

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/watches/8e18/ [thinkgeek.com]

Re:

[VanessaE]

This is a geek forum... wouldn't that be time-ramen?

The digital hand-written clock is better

[csb]

IMHO, the INDUSTORIOUS CLOCK [sic] is the coolest handwritten timekeeper:

http://yugop.com/ver3/stuff/03/fla.html [yugop.com] ...plus it has one-second resolution.

That's still my favorite, although some prefer Human Clock:

http://www.humanclock.com/ [humanclock.com]

That one requires occasional thought, which makes it suboptimal for a quick time check. Yes, I am that lazy. =-)

Re:

[bodland]

I hope management doesn't see this...

Just think ...

[PPH]

... of how fast the elves behind your LCD screen must be working.

Later

[wzinc]

Later he found-out he only needed to record a 12-hour video. :-)

Re:

[Fieryphoenix]

Ancient Romans historically represented four as IIII. Using IV to represent four has only been standard in modern times. Clock making tradition predates this standardization.

Re:

[4181]

See Roman Numerals#IIII vs IV. [wikipedia.org]

--
Hail IVPPITER!

OKAY I GET IT ALREADY

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

This isn't as cool as the INDUSTORIOUS CLOCK and the artist could have looped two 12-hour recordings. Now how about you creativity experts come up with some original comments?

What?!

[Geraden]

What?! No second hand??

heh

[shentino]

Now that's what I call having too much time on your hands.

A real work of art

[babboo65]

This is one of the finest traditions in clock making. It shows not only the workmanship of the master clock maker but also the cabinetry of the master woodworker coming together to bring you . . .

the grandfather clock!

Whats the big deal

[SnarfQuest]

I've watched this thing all the way through three times, but I don't understand what the big deal is. It's a real pain since there are no bathroom breaks built into the show.

Maybe a fourth time will bring enlightenment.