Designing for the Impossible: Creating a mobile application to track time dilation

In this paper we discuss the development of TimeTravel, a mobile application for tracking personal time dilation. Time dilation is the relativistic warping effect on time that velocity and gravity produces. Predicted by Einstein’s Special theory of relativity (1905) and verified by practical experiment, (Hafele and Keating 1972) time dilation affects all things in motion, anywhere in the Universe (Reinhardt 2007). Our project was to develop a simple application aimed at smart watches that could communicate the imperceptible effects of time dilation on a user’s everyday activities in an easy to understand, meaningful way. We describe the development and consider what happens when we attempt to visualise the imperceptible

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Author and article information

Contributors

Daniel Buzzo

David Jonas

Conference

Publication date: July 2015

Publication date (Print): July 2015

Pages: 106-112

Affiliations

[0001]Creative Technologies Lab

University of the West of England

Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, UK

[0002]The PatchingZone

Rotterdam

The Netherlands

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/eva2015.12

SO-VID: 81e08bb1-74be-4a77-8d52-32bbcd7c2d67

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts (EVA 2015)

Conference acronym: EVA

Conference number:

Conference location: London, UK

Conference date: 7 & 9 July 2015

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts

History

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/eva2015.12

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

T ArnallM. E Knutsen 2011 Immaterials: Light painting WiFi The Touch Project http://www.nearfield.org/2011/02/wifi-light-painting 10 December 2014
D Buzzo 2013 Lost time never In: Input Outputs conference proceedings
D Buzzo 2014 Time travel: Time dilation EVA London 2014: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts 171 175 Electronic Workshops in Computing, British Computer Society
D Buzzo 2014 Time Travel: Time dilation and a year of airflight – recent photographic work Forlaegger Fabrik20/Blurb
A DunneF Raby 2007 Critical Design FAQ Dunne & Raby http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/bydandr/13 /0 27 June 2015
W GaverA DunneE Pacenti 1999 Design: Cultural probes Interactions 6 1
J. C HafeleR. E Keating 1972 Around-the-World Atomic Clocks: Predicted Relativistic Time Gains Science 177 166 168
P. K HsuingR. H ThibadeauC. B CoxR. H. P Dunn 1990 Time dilation visualization in relativity Proc. Supercomputing ’90 835 844
S. K NagelC CarlT KringeR MartinP Knig 2005 Beyond sensory substitution: learning the sixth sense Journal of Neural Engineering 2 4 R13
S. E. A Reinhardt 2007 Test of relativistic time dilation with fast optical atomic clocks at different velocities Nature Physics 3 12 861 864
E. A Shanken 2002 Art in the Information Age: Technology and Conceptual Art Leonardo 35 4 433 438

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] T ArnallM. E Knutsen 2011 Immaterials: Light painting WiFi The Touch Project http://www.nearfield.org/2011/02/wifi-light-painting 10 December 2014

[2] D Buzzo 2013 Lost time never In: Input Outputs conference proceedings

[3] D Buzzo 2014 Time travel: Time dilation EVA London 2014: Electronic Visualisation and the Arts 171 175 Electronic Workshops in Computing, British Computer Society

[4] D Buzzo 2014 Time Travel: Time dilation and a year of airflight – recent photographic work Forlaegger Fabrik20/Blurb

[5] A DunneF Raby 2007 Critical Design FAQ Dunne & Raby http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/bydandr/13 /0 27 June 2015

[6] W GaverA DunneE Pacenti 1999 Design: Cultural probes Interactions 6 1

[7] J. C HafeleR. E Keating 1972 Around-the-World Atomic Clocks: Predicted Relativistic Time Gains Science 177 166 168

[8] P. K HsuingR. H ThibadeauC. B CoxR. H. P Dunn 1990 Time dilation visualization in relativity Proc. Supercomputing ’90 835 844

[9] S. K NagelC CarlT KringeR MartinP Knig 2005 Beyond sensory substitution: learning the sixth sense Journal of Neural Engineering 2 4 R13

[10] S. E. A Reinhardt 2007 Test of relativistic time dilation with fast optical atomic clocks at different velocities Nature Physics 3 12 861 864

[11] E. A Shanken 2002 Art in the Information Age: Technology and Conceptual Art Leonardo 35 4 433 438

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