Software Clock
Following the rules of aesthetics and dynamic interactions from the cyberpunk aesthetic, my “clock” seeks to help the audience interestingly view the passage of time.
The visual aesthetics it uses are grids to create a glitched look and to move the image on the x and y-axis. The colours used are bright neons, with high contrast dark backgrounds. The dynamic interaction is layered to create a chaotic mood of pieces that don’t seem to fit in with each other. Using one point perspective the continual movement of important subjects will be towards the horizon line. Sharp angles and lines with electric glows will make up most of the composition.
The clock measures intervals of time, every 5 minutes, for example, all the pieces in the gird align and form a coherent image before going back to its chaotic movement after the minute is over. The anticipation build comes at the very moment before the entire image is aligned, the satisfaction is in seeing the image fully realized. The way I’d want to confuse the audience is to have an array of time() (second(), minute(), hour()) and then the output is any time picked at random by the code. This will ensure that there is no predictability to the clock which is reflective of the type of culture cyberpunk encourages.
The point of the clock is to gratify the viewer. Scientifically anticipation leads to the release of dopamine (the chemical in our brains that are responsible for ‘happy’ feelings). Once dopamine is released the brain immediately wants more, which the clock using an array of time can manage to do at random. However, the twist comes in when the clock makes the user wait a substantial amount of time before gratifying it again. There is no rhyme or reason to the clock's behavior over time and this causes the viewer to have a lot of conflicts of emotion over the unreliability of said clock.
Overall the message to the viewer is sometimes Time its self is the most unpredictable element in our lives and we really can’t tell when our next moment of success will come so instead of constantly chasing that moment we need to make ourselves comfortable and find beauty in the in-between because a path we take is never about the destination, it’s about the journey.
