(this website is still being built!!!!! more documentation to come... )

This project stems from a deep exploration of the temporal frameworks that govern our lives. How can we move beyond rigid, universalized notions of time and reclaim our autonomy over how we experience it? how can we reframe computation as a tool to explore history, not erase it?

think of how you experience time. your imagination of it, how you live through it, how you imagine past, present, and future. where did that imagination come from? why do we think only in seconds, minutes, and hours? why does time feel encompassing, all knowing, untouchable, inaccessible? was it always this way?

as someone who has lived outside of clock time, there is a temporal and spatial experience that we are completely blind to, and we've become dependent on a dictated time, without any understanding of how we fit in it.

this project stems from a deep exploration of the temporal frameworks that govern our lives. how can we move beyond rigid, universalized notions of time and reclaim our autonomy over how we experience it? how can we take back time?

look around you. the sun, the moon, the direction of the wind, the stars, the clouds, the rain, all communicate time and space. they are the original clock, calendar, compass, and map. they are the original timekeepers. you measure them with your eyes, the tilt of your head, you can tell time using the dimensions of your hands, you can read the sky as easily as you read a clock face. as intuitively as you use google maps. and this is how people lived for thousands and thousands of years.

without a clock, we are lost. without a calendar, we are lost. without a compass, we are lost. without a map, we are lost. how did this happen? how did we become so dependent on these tools? where did these tools come from? who created them? who enforced them? and why are they so natural to us today?

how did we lose our connection to the natural world? who pushed that narrative? who benefits from it?

the time and space we have lived by is linear, imperial, politicized, and standardized. the minute is not so innocent.

this project is meant to serve as a critique to how:

time is politicized.
time is imperial.
time is linear.
time is imposed.

our devices, our history, our perception of time, and our language reflect that.

take a moment to imagine how people lived before the clock, the calendar, the compass, and the map. how did they know when to wake up, when to sleep, when to plant, when to harvest, when to move, when to stay, when to celebrate, when to mourn? how did they know where they were, where they were going, where they came from?

if i took away your phone, could you do the same?

this project promises that you can. and it teaches you how to do it. and with that, you can explore temporal imaginaries that stretch beyond time as we know it.

Resistant Atlas is an ongoing digital humanities project that explores the reconstruction of lost environmental logics through critical essays, digital tools, and physical artifacts.

below is documentation of first prototype review (apr 29th)

1. Reverse Sundial (Daytime Use)

A 5-ft diameter acrylic “reverse” sundial that uses the sun’s gleam (as opposed to its shadow) to reveal which sun from the Resistant Atlas: Names of the Sun research corresponds to the sun overhead. Rather than telling time, it translates the sun’s visual alignment into the definitions drawn from the meteorology archives.

1. reverse sundial, designed for outside

2. Establishing Parameters

3. Sundial Components

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2. Reverse Sundial (Nighttime Use)

After dark, or indoors, the sundial transforms into an interactive installation. A projected interface maps onto the dial, and as the arm moves, it dynamically updates to display the corresponding sun name in real time.

3. Remote-Controlled Miniature Sun

A handheld sundial, which is connected to the larger installation, allows viewers to point toward any part of the sky, in which the larger dial will respond to in real time. This component reintroduces the embodied, environmental logic once used to understand the sun to the viewer in today’s time and orientation logic. This system integrates Arduino, ESP32, JavaScript, and TouchDesigner.

the above remote is connected to the larger projection and controls it in real time.

4. Booklet – Resistant Atlas: Names of the Sun

A printed booklet archiving the sun names explored in this project.

5. Pamphlets

A collection of pamphlets outlining the methodology of names of the sun and several projects under resistant atlas, such as houses of the moon and cloudspotter.

next..

The upcoming exploration, Houses of the Moon, is a study of lunar stations, or where the moon seems to mark the night sky, and the intricate environmental logic they chart over time. they hold immense historical, navigational, and poetic significance, and these movements shaped the temporal and spatial frameworks we are familiar with today

GSAPP CDP '25 portfolio review can be found here