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RIPPLE CLOCK (WIP)

An alternative representation of time



2024 - Ongoing





The perception of time can be described as a feeling of stuckness – being stuck at the exact moment where the past and the future collide. But time also feels continuous, where the moment of stuckness keeps changing.

The ripple clock represents time as an eternal ripple of the past and the future, where the two meet at “now.” The clocks' hands move in a domino sequence and will complete one full circle every 1 minute. It will bounce at the current time every 1 minute and trigger the moving sequence in the opposite direction. The domino motion represents causality in that the past event leads to the happening of the next event. When the clock hand bounces at “now,” it will reverse the direction, and the chain of causality will also reverse its direction. Different cultures have different representations of time, and so is the perception of it from those people. How do we understand “now?” The Ripple Clock creates “now” as the exact moment when the two directions of time flow meet.

* This is project is a work in progress.


Each hand position corresponds to a unique time of day (as shown on the right). Only one hand will be indicating time at any one moment. The other hands will point to the active clock hand. All hours on the top half are when the Sun is above the ground and all hours on the bottom half are when the Sun is below the ground.

WIP photos

Version 1 assembly