hipclock proposes a completely new way of looking at time. It was developed as a response to the questions: How and why do we use clocks and other time measuring devices? and: What might they mean to us?
I began with the way we experience time physically and decided that the most appropriate part of the body to reference would be the hips. Our hips are around our centre of balance. The Tan Den, considered the centre of our being in Eastern philosophies, is also contained within this area.
The idea was to create a clock which measured how often we moved our hips and then to relate this to our experience of moving through time.
The hipclock consists of an electronic circuit with embedded sensors worn on the hips, connected serially to a macintosh. The display is currently a projection on the wall, though could be a PDA, or alternatively, a panel on the back of a t-shirt (requiring a particular effort to see it).
At the start of each day, the display is empty, or black, and then each time you move your hips throughout the day, the hipclock adds a line to the display. The colour of the line reflects how long it is since the last time you moved your hips, compared to how long it was the time before. In a way the hipclock is like a sensuality meter – you can see how fast you’re moving through your day, how rhythmically or how eratically. There are a number of palettes to choose from, and you can adjust the length of your day if you are going through a more static or a more active period than usual.