Image Factory: Time relative to oneself in a crowd

(bear with me on this one)

have you ever watched people walking down a busy metropolitan street and noticed that people all walk at different speeds indifferent to whomever's in there way. This made me think that time in a crowd is relative to every individual, these individuals get annoyed by people moving a different speeds (speeds that relative to themselves is too slow)

I'm not quite sure what i'm trying to achieve by that statement (rinne mé é ar meisce) but thinking on it reminded me of several scenes from the show House of Lies (the one with don cheadle) in which the main character steps out of digetic time to break the fourth wall and address the audience. When he does this the scene around him freezes and he begins to move about the foreground making with the funny. I thought this effect would be perfect to highlight how someone who likes to take their time might feel when trapped in a bustling crowded street.

http://vimeo.com/32028017 (this video shows how some of the interesting VFX are done on the show)

however the effect i'm interested in is more similar to this:

the making of:

these effects would be amazing if i was able to reproduce them , however I question if i have the time/skill to complete it effectively.

Image Factory: Time as a cycle (AE)

essentially my idea for this panel is to create a looped model for the expansion of the universe using the particle effects

Image Factory: Time as a River panel (AE)

The idea I had for this panel is based heavily off the idea of time as a river.

The triptych panel would show either an actual river or one that is animated, with the flows highlighted using the particle effect. It would show a large clump of particles enter the screen from one side, moving slowly at first, this clump of particles would follow the flow of the river at first but then would enter turbulent flows, and begin to move faster and as the flow becomes more turbulent the clump will break apart/down and disperse into nothing, representing the end of time as we know it. the process would then repeat itself.

I would need to get to grips with moving the camera relative to the image (as we learnt in the animating the still volcano tutorial) so the viewer will follow the flow of particles. And if possible to break up the monotomy of this continuous loop by coding the particles to appear as different colours, and or, to change the motion of the turbulent flows each time.

Image Factory: Death Clock? Panel?

Upon various Google searches about time and death I came across several websites with the concept of a death clock. These are websites which upon entering some details about yourself (age, BMI etc.) will predict when you will die.

From visiting these sites an mulling them over I thought of an idea for a panel in my triptych:

An hourglass sandwiched between two silhouetted faces like :

except not back to the future :P

  the hourglass will have grains of sand (representing time obviously) passing through it with the un-silhouetted eyes of the faces watching the grains, once the bottom is nearly full the hourglass flips and the process repeats.

This is somewhat a commentary on my own feelings on time and death, I feel that in some ways time was created by those afraid of their own demise(much like the way in which we create gods/an afterlife to appease their own fears of dying).

The concept of a death clock , the wanting to know when you will die raises something of a moral dilemma: is it better to live a life ignorant of when the end will come(an arguably happier life) or one where you spend the rest of your life in fear of your upcoming death and spend the rest of your life attempting to prevent the inevitable. (this is of course based of the hypothetical that clocks work accurately)

Image Factory: Time as a cycle

Time moving in cycles or rather our physical world moving in cycles of time is another interesting concept, one which is evident in almost any living thing or otherwise (although it is more clear to us in that which lives)

Living things ( Animals, Fauna etc.) have very evident cycles of life. The shortest and most obvious/abundant to us humans is the life cycle of trees, how in the spring their leaves are 'born', in the summer the leaves 'live', in the autumn they begin to 'fail/become ill' , and in the winter they 'die', all before being 'reborn' in the spring thus completing the cycle of time and the cycle continues.

Time/life cycles vary with different cyclic model, the longest cyclic model being the cyclic model of the universe proposed by Einstein , in which he stated the universe is in a constant state of flux. First a Big Bang followed by an exponential  expansion before the gravitational pull of mass begins to cause the universe to begin shrinking before undergoing a Big Crunch and bouncing back with another Bang. The cycle is obvious here:

Big Bang- Birth
Expansion of the universe- Growth
Retraction of the universe- Old age/Illness
Big Crunch-Death
Big Bang-Rebirth

Image Factory: Time as a river

Thinking of time as a river is an interesting concept to me as there are many characteristics of time that are synonymous with that of a river. For example time as far as we are aware of it moves in one continuous direction, and yes while a river may not take the most direct route to the sea there is still a final destination in mind. (Although we have no knowledge of an end to time so this model doesn't fully fit)

Another example would be that a river is effected by many different currents/flows (turbulent, streamlined etc.) much the same way that relative movement effects time (the faster one moves, the closer they get to the speed of light, the more space time begins to break down) I feel this is synonymous with the turbulent flow of a river.

The flow is constantly accelerating as the flow is continuously changing direction, and as such (without any outward interference, such as the river bank in this example) the flow exponentially begins to become more chaotic/begins to break down more.

Image Factory: The End of Time

The End of Time By Peter Mettler

This is an extremely interesting documentary concerning time, In this doc Mettler travels the world investigating our perceptions of time.

"Working at the limits of what can easily be expressed Filmmaker Peter Mettler takes on the elusive subject of time and once again turns his camera to filming the unfilmable" - http://www.theendoftimemovie.com/

During this documentary Mettler travels the world investigating various time related subjects, such as the particle accelerator in Switzerland where they are attempting to probe regions of time we cannot see. To Hawaii to investigate the physical representation of time in the lava flows. He also visits Detroit to document the fall to ruin of its city and the efforts to rebuild. He finishes his journey in India with Hindu funeral rites where he tackles the idea of rebirth

Mettler has not only forged an extremely thought provoking documentary but one that fully immerses you with the extraordinary visuals captured by cinematographers Camille Budin, Nick de Pencier and Mettler himself. I would defiantly recommend it as a watch, not just as it relates to the unit but also as being one of the most visually stunning and overlooked films of 2013.

Image factory: Time

Time is the curse of the self aware.

Time as we humans know it has so little significance to 'unaware' animals like dogs or cats, Sure domesticated animals pick up learned behaviors/habituation to certain times , feeding etc. from the regularity with which their owners act. Other than that an animal knows to sleep when its dark, awake when it's light and to eat when it's hungry.

Human's self awareness and natural curiosity caused early civilizations to begin to investigate natural phenomena  such as the tide, changes in weather (Seasons) and the movement of the stars.

As civilizations developed, as did our understanding of time. Time begun to play a much more important role in society with the introduction of calendars and crude clocks developed from observations of nature( sundials, water clocks etc.).

I think the point i'm attempting to make from this is that due to the awareness of time, human life appears to have become much more hectic (everything has a deadline nowadays). While some might argue that returning to classic time keeping methods (i.e the grumbling of your stomach) might benefit humankind in the long run it would also cripple our world as we know it, so as of now unless someone can create a better system we're STUCK with Persian minuets and seconds. 

someone should have warned early man

IT'S A TRAP!

Image Factory: Time. Triptychs

Triptych (Three-Fold) a brief intro

- A piece of artwork (usually a paneled painting) that is divided into three sections , generally the sections would be hinged to allow the artwork to be displayed opened or closed.

Triptych's evolved out of middle age christian art and were traditionally used as altar displays and to depict saints etc.

Because the ability of the triptych's to fold they were able to be transported easily and with minimal damage to the image, as such one popular use for the triptych other than religious art ,would be to display potential matches among the royalty of the time.

The triptych form is mostly used in modern times as a means of displaying photography, either the three frames following a theme or one image broken into three.

Famous triptych artists include :

Francis Bacon

 Max Beckmann

Hieronymus Bosch