On the night of the harvest moon, I waited for the dark on my roof, playing with shells and unaware of the yellow moon. I stood up and saw it immediately. I didn’t know why was it so orange, I thought it was shining through a dirty atmosphere. It got whiter as it ascended. The moon is a heliostat. She shines the sun and dulls it back to earth. I used to live in a room without windows, only a skylight, and watched the full moon bring in a perfect glowing square; the light of the moon, above and beyond Brooklyn’s light pollution.

Last semester, I mentioned to you that I attended a Time and Cosmos exhibit at NYU’s Study of the Ancient World in 2017. The exhibit stunned me but I never found any notes beyond “they have a sundial in the shape of a ham.” Last week I reached out to ISAW for some material on the exhibit and they sent me the catalog free of charge! It’s a beautiful coffee table book and I relished it over the weekend. I learned about clepsydra, timekeeping contraptions and what greeks would come to call prostitutes based on the small mechanisms they used to time sessions. There are many other tidbits in there. I am bringing in this book so you can read and also enjoy. I gave Suraj my book on Biorhythms to share with class but, if you receive this message in time: please keep that book on campus. I am curious about the female clock, and now I think that book could hold some keys.

“Time is going to be his best friend…” a family member told me about her grieving husband. “Prague is 10 days away” Michael Caine said in the new film, MEDIEVAL, which I watched Sunday. Wasn’t time one of the first standards of measurement for distance?

I thought about our class discussion on the pandemic…How is time when experience is rigid/repetitive? It is stuck.

I timed something using the Mississippi system. How is it accurate even when I stop articulating “MI SI SI PI” but mutter it quickly under my breath?

Another thought: a cigarette is as effective as my hourglass. It is a gift of time.

Thinking of the sundials, I wonder What data do I want from these totems? This is to be answered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1MwtNafXMM&ab_channel=TFBNGHT

One idea is to use industrial, refractive lighting to see if it’s possible to concentrate the exact edge of the sunlight coming in. I haven’t researched ‘if the moon was one pixel’ but the name of this project makes me curious to break sunlight down to a point. and How?

This is related to the above inquiry, but also a gnomon that I would like to study with a time-lapse:

Another gnomon that I was playing with. I hope to develop this one further so that I can create some Moire Effect, which Danny Rozin was explaining. My next plan for this gnomon is to attach a mirror angled against it and see how the reflective piece (the bike part) will shine against it. Definitely this will be a continuation of my heliostat…Next step is installation and time-lapse.

Next gnomon. This one I’m excited to build using sheets of transparent color, the sun will create different colors at different angles…