A wall clock built on zen-like principles is designed to provoke us into understanding ourselves better, through a unique new approach that intersects between innovative art, cutting edge wearable technology and the human body.
Research collective Fabrica has created the Uji wall clock, an interesting take on the notion of time that entirely eschews traditional chronology and bases it on the individual instead. Using wearable ECG sensors and radio modules hooked up to Arduino, Uji's hands are guided not by the man-made passage of time but by wirelessly transmitting each tick or tock of the human heart. The ceramic device is minimally designed in greyscale, reflecting its function, and perhaps the potential bleakness of the message that can be taken from it.
"Uji uses the same technology as wearable devices to detect the heartbeat but it doesn't use it in a very quantifiable way, it uses it in a very abstract way," designer Ivor Williams told Dezeen. Williams intended to raise questions about the quantifiable self movement, in which users wear technology to monitor their bodies with a view to self improvement.
This project forces a rethink of time in terms of the self, embracing the zen idea of an enlightening nothingness. In this respect it is a touch reminiscent of Durr, a vibrating watch that could provoke existential crisis or a sense of blissful nihility, depending entirely on the wearer's philosophical outlook.