TimeMachine is an Android application which aims to capture the elasticity of time experienced in everyday life, and translate it into a meaningful image.

It’s a piece of freeware which asks the question “Why do some days feel longer than others?”

Designed to measure oneself against oneself, the project deploys a self-referential system to emphasise the co-dependent relation of user and experience. It assumes that despite their significant differences in human perception, space and time are indissociable, and that context and activity are inseparable – places to which one has never been simply don’t exist. The only external cultural assumption it makes is that the place where users spend more time is ‘home’.

TimeMachine tracks one’s individual GPS coordinates with a timestamp, and continually processes this data to infer their spatio-temporal patterns, in realtime. Personal habits are created over time and only correlated to those collective norms that cannot be controlled by humans (length of day). One’s unique temporal pattern is built from zero and trained by repetition over time, and while this template undergoes changes, it maintains enough self-identity to plot differences in relation to it.

An individual temporal pattern is an entity defined by two asymmetric axes: one which distinguishes whether the user is in, or outside, their normal routine, the other reflects one’s current activity rate, the acceleration and deceleration of the number of places visited. A temporal pattern is the result of constant interactions between the difference in one’s routine and rate of activity. The system is designed to measure deviation from the norm and express novelty. For instance, sitting at home watching TV, for someone who spends their life flying around the world, would be an extraordinary event, and clearly outside their pattern.

To answer the question “Why do some days feel longer than others?”, TimeMachine proposes that changes in the temporal dimension of each day, its intensity, the perception of its expansion or contraction, depend upon the relations between events, the differences in one’s individual time pattern.

TimeMachine performs a realtime translation of personal temporal patterns into a visual form, which exploits colour as a quality which can be read and interpreted.

Receive a beta release here.

Exhibitions and Presentations

Exhibition. xCoAx 2014: Computation, Communication, Aesthetics and X, Porto, Portugal. 25-27 June 2014.
Photos.

Presentation. 3rd NeDiMAH workshop on Networks Over Space and Time: Modelling and visualizing complex data in the digital humanities, FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. November 2013.

Presentation. MA Communication Design and New Media, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (FBAUL), Portugal. June 2013.

Workshop. How would a mobile phone perceive its user?,  MA Communication Design and New Media, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (FBAUL), Portugal. March – May 2010.

Exhibition. UM International Festival of Experimental Media, Lisbon, Portugal. November 2009.

Presentation. Future Places Festival, Porto, Portugal. October 2009.

Exhibition. Experimenta Design 09, Parallel Events, Lisbon, Portugal. September 2009.

Academic Papers, Posters and Demos

Poster and demo. Jared Hawkey, Sofia Oliveira, Nuno Correia, Olivier Perriquet, ‘TimeMachine’, xCoAx 2014: Computation, Communication, Aesthetics and X, Oporto, Portugal. June 2014.

Jared Hawkey, Sofia Oliveira, Olivier Perriquet, Nuno Correia, Cristiano Lopes, ‘Personal Routine Visualization using Mobile Device’, 11th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia, Ulm, Germany. December 2012.

Poster  and demo. ‘Time Machine’, International Joint Conference on Ambient Intelligence, Amsterdam, Holand. November 2011. http://www.ami-11.org/

Nuno Correia, Armanda Rodrigues, Tiago Amorim, Jared Hawkey, Sofia Oliveira,  ‘A Mobile System to Visualize Patterns of Everyday Life’ in Proceeding of the International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence (ISAmI 2011)
Abstract – http://www.springerlink.com/content/q824335326105811/
April 2011

Samuel del Bello, Jared Hawkey, Sofia Oliveira, Olivier Perriquet, Nuno Correia, ‘Processing Location Data for Ambient Intelligence Applications (S)’ in ‘Second International ICST Conference, AMBI-SYS 2011, Porto, Portugal, March 24-25, 2011, Revised Selected Papers’
Abstract – http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-23902-1_9 in Ambient Media and Systems, Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering Volume 70,2011, pp 66-69

Credits: A CADA / CITI Production

TimeMachine is a CADA project (Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira) developed in collaboration with Centro de Informática e Tecnologias de Informação (CITI), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.

Beta release (September 2012 – January 2013)
Research, Development and System Design: Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira, Nuno Correia
Computational Research: Sofia Oliveira, Heitor Ferreira, Nuno Correia
Visual System and Interface: Jared Hawkey, Sofia Oliveira, Heitor Ferreira
Computational Development: Heitor Ferreira

4th prototype (September 2011 – June 2012)
Research, Development and System Design: Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira, Nuno Correia
Computational Research: Nuno Correia, Sofia Oliveira, Cristiano Lopes (MA Student)
Computational Development, Android Mobile: Cristiano Lopes
Visual System: Jared Hawkey

3rd prototype (September 2010 – July 2011)
Research, Development and System Design: Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira, Nuno Correia
Computational Research: Olivier Perriquet, Nuno Correia, Sofia Oliveira, Samuel del Bello (MA Student), Cristiano Lopes (MA Student)
Mathematical Modeling: Olivier Perriquet
Computational Development, Data Mining: Samuel del Bello
Computational Development, Android Mobile: Cristiano Lopes

2nd prototype (October 2009 – July 2010)
Research, Development and System Design: Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira, Nuno Correia
Computational Research and Development: Nuno Correia,  Armanda Rodrigues, Tiago Amorim (MA student)
Computational Development, Mobile: Tiago Amorim

1st prototype (June – September 2009)
Research, Development and System Design: Jared Hawkey/Sofia Oliveira, Nuno Correia
Computational Research and Development: Nuno Correia, Armanda Rodrigues
Computational Development: Margarida Piriquito
Graphic Design: Sílvia Prudêncio