This contraption engages and amplifies our detachment from the passage of time when we work or occupy a space. It seeks to achieve this by emphasizing the speed of the day through mimicking the sun's path on an hourly basis. This is designed to make the user aware of the consumption of time by localizing the passing of a day to their immediate space, reconnecting it to our awareness, bringing joy to the act of simply spending it.

The contraption was built over the course of a week and was incomplete from original design, but has still contributed to the progression of my thesis philosophy.

This is a prototype of the arc at 1:5. The process of constructing at smaller scales allowed me to figure out how to prepare the mould for the larger arc, but also to test how to prepare the woods. The MDF was already flexible however the other all required soaking in either water of PVA.

The larger arc was made by glue laminating several sheets of MDF initially to test the scaled up mould type which relied entirely on the tension of the sheets to create a smooth arc. The intention was to create it for final construction using birch sheets at 1mm thick, however they were not available at the time. The entire process of creating the arc 1500mm wide and 100mm deep with a thickness of 12mm (3 sheets) took just under 5 hours including gluing and prep time.

Here the cogs, calculated using Autocad Inventor, were cut out of 4mm acrylic on the laser cutter - this would allow for the pieces of the contraption to visible in how they worked whilst still being structurally efficient. As it turned out, most woods provided non-viable cogs - stripping or cracking - under the force of the arc's torque.

This is the prototype for the Azimuth control, it was abandoned due to the fact the gearing ratio was out and didn't resist the counter movement of the arc well enough. This was solved by adding a series of gang gears (similar to a clock) to reduce the force through the mechanism.

The original design, which incorporated a Sun simulator running off a clockwork engine in order to traverse the arc over 60 minutes. The inner arc was to be a filter to resemble the changing light of the day, whilst the light source passed through the centre of the arc in a channel specifically created for that.

This is a closeup of the two mechanisms, one completed the other not so. Below is the assembly diagram showing how they would be constructed and function.