LU JIA



  • LOST AND FOUND

  • FORM GENERATOR

  • EXPERIMENTAL CLOCK

  • EXQUISITE CORPSE

  • ANTI-SURVEILLANCE TOOL

  • EXPERIMENTAL CAMERA

  • BITMAP GAME

  • CONSENTFUL INTERFACE

  • DATA PORTRAIT

  • TRANSLATION DEVICE

    • TRANSLATION DEVICE


    DESCRIPTION

    There is always a feeling that I am living in multiple timezone all the time. I recently moved to New Jersey. But my friends are mostly in California or back in China(where I am from). And my family is back there as well. This forces me to convert the time all the time, in order to be able to get in touch with them during appropriate time. But it is hard when living in different timezones. Our time just doesn't overlap for most of the time. Therefore, I made this Jet Lag clock, with two different timezones, visually showing the differences that timezones are bringing to life.

    CREDITS:
    Geo location API: https://freegeoip.app/json/
    World time API: https://worldtimeapi.org/api/ip
    Thanks to DT Study Jason Li for debuging and optimizing the code.

    DESIGN PROCESS

    Initial sketches:



    My initial idea was to have two clocks, and the distance of these two changes based on time. During the daytime both me and may friends/family are awake, the two clocks overlaps. When we do not, the distance gets bigger. Indicating the difference in time.

    After I transfer to p5, I find it to be a little more clearer if the clocks stay in a fixed position. But the shape of the clocks changing differently.

    It begins with two clocks shifting in different ways. At upper left corner, it shows the user's current geo location as well as local time. At the bottom right, it shows Beijing geo location and time.
    I use color coding to connect the two clocks with each locations. Seeing the clock shifting in an unfixed form to me is like feeling the time stretching, and experiencing the movements of time. Or to be our own internal times conflicting with the universal clock. These two clocks have different motions for most of the time, which expresses the significant estrangement that different timezones bring.
    After a while, they both graduately transforms into a circle, and overlaps on each other.
    Afterwards, it will get distorted, and transforming into different shapes again. Indicating our time gets different.

    Final:


    REFLECTION

    Working with API is quite tricky to me. For this project, I spent a lot time find APIs, but there are a lot unreliable and unstable APIs, especially for time and geo locations. But it is also a fun experience. After learning about this, I find that API can be really helpful to greatly improve and expand many of my previous projects.