Tauba Auerbach – The Thing Quarterly: currently on sale on eBay

On eBay at the moment:

A wonderful limited edition 24 hour clock from TAUBA AUERBACH created for issue 20 of THE THING QUARTERLY way back in 2013.  Known for her stunning typography and print works this 10.5inch diameter takes on an analogue timepiece with a 24 hour version running from midnight to midnight.  The clock features black hour and minutes hands and gold-hued numerals in AUERBACH’s graphic style.  The clock can be hung with the built-in hook and needs just one AA battery to get up and running. In excellent condition, the clock also comes in a stunning bespoke box from an edition of 1500. 

$ 57

The Berlin Set Theory Clock

berlin-set-theory-clock or 09:54?

This clock has been mentioned in the news recently. It’s the Set Theory Clock, also known as the Berlin Clock. There’s an excellent description — and a working version — at 3Quarks:Berlin Clock. It consists of 24 lights (and a 25th one on the top which flashes every second).

From the description at 3Quarks:

It makes use of the principle of set theory to depict the time. The time of day is displayed in a 24-hour format and can be determined by simply adding and multiplying the glowing lights.
The first, uppermost row consists of 4 red lights, whereby each of these lights stands for 5 full hours. The 4 red lights in the second row display one full hour apiece. For example, if the first 2 lights in the uppermost row and all 4 lights in the second row are lit up, that represents 1400 hours, or 2 p.m. (2 × 5 + 4 hours).

The third row is composed of 11 lights: 3 red and 8 yellow. Each light in this row stands for 5 elapsed minutes. The 3 red lights have been assigned to mark the quarters of an hour and are intended to make reading the clock easier. Last of all, the yellow row at the very bottom displays units of single minutes.

The working version can be found at 3Quarks – Set Theory Clock.

The original version was installed in 1975:

Dieter Binninger, an inventor and tinkerer from Berlin who is also a trained clockmaker, designed the Set Theory Clock on behalf of the Berlin Senate in 1975. The clock was installed on Kurfürstendamm in the Berlin-Charlottenburg district and rapidly evolved into a tourist attraction, though it turned out to have one serious disadvantage: its inner workings consisted of hundreds of light bulbs, some of which constantly burned out.

For clock watchers, the clock shows different time scales. You can observe the slow march of the 5-hour periods on the top bar, or watch each minute pass by on the bottom bar. Unfortunately, reading the precise time requires some mental arithmetic, which makes the clock hard to use.

As for why it’s in the news, some references to a “Berlin Clock” have been made in reference to the famous Kryptos sculpture: Sculptor Offers Another Clue in 24-Year-Old Mystery at C.I.A..

If it’s not a reference to this clock, perhaps it’s a reference to the Alexanderplatz World Clock:

Berlin 376444 640

No Watch: special edition

You can find this elegant 24 hour watch, and other interesting pieces, at No Watch.

no-watch

If you visit the web site before the end of 2014, you can buy these watches at a reduced price: for a single watch ($100 discount), use coupon code “24hourtime”, for two or more watches (50% discount) the coupon code is “24hourtime24”. The coupon codes are valid for any model in store up to 12/31/2014. Also, free worldwide economic shipping (Registred Air Mail shipping with a tracking) is available with this offer.

If you have any questions, visit the web site.

24 hours a day

Applications for iPad and iPhone often make use of the 24 hour dial, mainly because it’s a much simpler interface to the daily routine, showing the entire day at a glance, and avoiding the inevitable confusion between AM and PM.

Rove

Rove is a simple iPhone app that tracks your movements unobtrusively, in the background, and records them, together with any notes and photographs that you take as you go. Billed as private journalling or life-logging, Rove shows your current day (only the current day at present) on a 24 hour dial:

Rove

Owaves

Owaves is, according to the developer, “the world’s first wellness planner”:

Owaves makes it easy to plan health and wellness goals into your day. Colorful and vibrant, with a novel 24-hour clock, the planner is fun to use and lets you see your day in a whole new way. Oriented to sunrise and sunset, Owaves guides you to a balanced lifestyle and healthy circadian rhythm.

Eastern and Western health experts agree there are five main ingredients for a long and healthy life:

-Sleep

-Nutrition

-Exercise

-Mindfulness, Meditation, Yoga, Managing Stress

Love and Social

Owaves is the only day planner in the world designed to let you prioritize these activities alongside work, play and miscellaneous errands.

The planner incorporates input from thought leaders in chronobiology, mindfulness, and professional sports.

It’s Visual. It’s Fun. And it’s Easy-to-use.

owaves health clock

The developer explains:

The clock is oriented with sunrise at traditional 12 o’clock position. Sunrise and sunset are prominently featured and localized based on the user’s location. There’s arguably an epidemic of circadian rhythm disorders going on post-rapid spread of artificial light, so this gentle “nudge” is meant to remind the user that sunrise is the beginning of the day.

– menu of activities focuses on 5 key aspects of preventive health as per the American College of Preventive Medicine and American College of Lifestyle Medicine: exercise, sleep, nutrition, stress management, and love/social

The future plan is to integrate wearable device data to create a feedback loop for wellness and health applications.

Through the lens of wellness and health, the 5 main activities featured – Exercise, Sleep, Nutrition, Relax (i.e. managing stress) and Love/Social (i.e. spending time with loved ones) – are THE activities of interest. Considered the new “lifestyle vital signs” by the American College of Preventive Medicine and the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, since they are more prognostic of chances for future morbidity and mortality for today’s generation than the vital signs of the past (i.e. HR, BP, RR, etc.). I.e. they are more helpful in assessing one’s chances of obtaining a chronic disease like: diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, metabolic syndrome, depression, anxiety, osteoporosis, …

The next version will include: Weekly and Monthly views, Social Sharing Options, a Brief Tutorial and a bit more… And of course, as mentioned, calendar integration and circadian rhythm intelligence are on the books as well.

Owaves is promising, and will become much more useful when calendar integration is implemented.

How does my day look?

A day in the life of architect Le Corbusier:

Corbusiers days

This is one of the entries on an intriguing infographic by R J Andrews posted at infowetrust.com. It shows typical daily routines of some famous historical figures, displaying their work/recreation activities on a 24 hour chart.

Creative routines edit3

The two advantages of the 24 hour analog way of displaying time are that the entire day can be seen at a glance, and that time is displayed in context. Whereas a digital display tells you the time right now, an analog dial can show you the current time in the context of the surrounding time periods.

To use this kind of display to plan your time rather than record it, you could look for some suitable software, although there isn’t much around at the moment. One example I spotted recently is the CandooIt concept, currently available for iPhone and iPads, but perhaps planned for Androids soon, who knows. The idea is that your calendar and other plans can be shown on a circular chart, thus allowing you to see ‘at a glance’ what your day looks like.

Candooitscreen568x568

However, in its present form, CandooIt is difficult to use with an interface that’s both too minimalistic and confusingly animated, and it doesn’t really provide the features that you would expect from a basic calendar/planning app (such as reading from the built-in calendar…). Hopefully the author can improve the execution and make the concept work.

Butterfly Dial

The Butterfly Dial is an ingenious invention designed to combine both the 12 hour and 24 hour dials into a single 12 hour dial.

It’s much easier to see it in action than try to explain it:

butterfly dial

The video can be seen on YouTube.

It’s no substitute for a true 24 hour dial, but it’s a much neater solution than the Cyclos dial, described in the Design page of this site:

cyclos