Co-Designly Practice, (CDLY P) case study 5:

Time:

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"Tick-tock, sun clock, thistle and dock". Robert Macfarlane

"What's the time Mr Wolf?!"

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This week, the 4-5-year-olds CDLY P designed sundials, revealing fascinating insights into how they phenomenologically

perceive time. Most of the children don't have a working (functional) grasp of time – this doesn't seem to bother them. In-

tuitively, their sensing of time (felt sense) is embodied and tacitly encoded differently by each individual, for example, a

mix of circadian and diurnal rhythms with contextual but subjective ‘childishly arbitrary’ markers. Subsequently, their per-

ception of time is elementally 'childishly' phenomenological; a qualitative "now and not now".

 

They excitedly talk at once in a confusing entangling of yesterday, today, tomorrow, or "in seven sleeps time," and every

day "It's my birthday!" or "Is today Art? Are we doing Art today?" Interestingly, this could imply that time is a cognitively

learned discipline; a structure to support the children's maturing awareness of a shared synchronicity and synergy. So,

they were able to approach the project with tremendous openness, curiosity, and interpretative creativity. 

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“Every class I ask “Is it Art next? Are we having Ms Scovell today?” (S., 6)

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“I think it is better than other classes. I forget I’m at school; about home time. I don’t ever look at the clock”. (D., 7)

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Our discussion leads to searching questions about the 'regime' of time as a linear and sequential ordering of the past,

present, and future – since "I think forwards and backwards" and "The clock is a circle, not a line". (J., 6) We discuss vary-

ing historiographic anthropological representations of time. We know from anthropological inquiry, archaeology, ethnopre-

historical sources, art, and linguistics that older Andean societies understood time differently. They believed that past,

sent, and future happen simultaneously in this moment. This simultaneity or perpetual nowness is akin to consciousness

and implies the past and the future continuously alter by activity in the present (is quantum mechanical), Physicist and

Philosopher Ernst Mach's "time is nothing but change".

The atemporal and anarchic collision of past-present-future simultaneity, chance, and accident was something Western

Avant-Garde artists of the 1920s and 30s attempted to simulate creatively. 'Vanguard' Early Modernism was portent for

the Post-Modernist 'deconstructivist assemblage' - a suspended, conflicted moment of "event" or happening, (a simultan-

eous, quantum-like superposition and collapse). Fast-forward to accelerating technological and communicative advances

via the internet - where a childlike awe-inspiring, kaleidoscopic lucidity and a discursive, 'stream of consciousness' are

virtual reality (a real reality). 
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Like the children in Classes 1 and 2, some cultures also appear to have a minimal concept of time. The Pirahã tribe of

the Amazonia have a language based on humming and whistling; without numbers, letters, or art, there are no descriptors

for colours and no particular religious beliefs or creation myth. Their language has no past tense; everything exists exist-

entially, within the present (their presence of their live, phenomenological perception). 
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The Native American, Pueblo, Hopi tribe of Arizona have a  language that communicates linguistic relativity, but with "no

words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions that refer directly to what [Western ears] call 'time.' Their religious

beliefs include a cyclic view of time, similar to the ancient Hindu and Buddhist “wheel of time” possibly reinterpreted as

"sort of like a Möbius strip!" (A., 6)

 

"And then they respawn" (G., 5) at the Möbius twist/turn!

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We look at the year-long rotation of the earth around the sun on its day-and-night circular and seasonal axis to explain

how a sundial might work. S., (7) notes "If we're on a spinning ball and go upside down a lot of the time we don't fall off

because of gravetty. Gravetty is like glue".

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G.(6) explains that in Minecraft it is a day and night in 20 minutes, "So, it is getting lighter and darker a lot and you can

spend the night there, in another [time] dimension".

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We make a sundial in the playground, marking out the hours in a colourful circle of triangles. E. arms at her sides stands

vertical at the centre as the gnomon, her cast shadow telling the time. Crowding about E., hands-held-high, arms straining

and on tiptoes the children loudly plead to "be the gnome." Loosening the knot of arms around E., I ask "What do we know

about time? The clock has an order and is in a number sequence!" – so we take turns to track the time with our perpend-

icular bodies, the sun feels steady, nice, and warm at our backs, our shadows stretch to fall across the intervals of triangle

digit.

 

"They should be a body or arms – why are they called hands of a clock?" (M., 6) 

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"Is it because there are five minutes between numbers on a clock and there are five fingers on each hand?" (P., 6)

 

"Then why do we have ten fingers and not twelve?" (S., 7)
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"We've all pointy fingers like that, to point". (H., 5)
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"If I'm in the centre and lie down, is that like setting the alarm?" (J., 6)

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We make paper plate sundials and flat and folded, dimensional sundials. Some children wear watches, others fitbits; they

decide to make a sundial watch as a Father's Day present as "we're sick of always making cards". We experiment with

various styles, including an origami watch with a folded, diagonal gnomon. It takes two weeks for us to work out and is frus-

tratingly so close, but back-to-front or upside down, we're not sure. (Pre-Covid, we made colourful "fashionista" ties out of

card, tissue paper and felt tips that we 'compelled' our fathers to wear to work. S's father had a lot of fun on the train look-

ing serious reading his paper and at his important desk in his "totally nuts-aloha" tie!)
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By the end of the topic, we each have several iterative versions of sundials, clocks, and watches, all vibrantly and eclectic-

ally decorated, since "Time owns us and bosses us about and tells us what to do, but we each have our own times". (E., 4)
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"Yes, I have my own clock face and when I'm in the playground, I can be the stick [gnomon]". (D., 4)

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Chronemics is the study of the use of time; how it is perceived and valued, particularly in non-verbal communication. The

children's (roundabout) Co-Designly Practice of sundials (and later compasses) were a form of visual chronemics, their

experiential tempo – as materialised in iterating, visual forms.
 

In the following two classes, we learn about and make stick navigation charts. Explorers from the Micronesian Pacific Is-

lands traditionally navigated using stick charts identifying patterns in ocean conditions such as currents, swells, or wind.

Constructed of local materials like palm ribs, coconut fibre, and shells or coral pebbles; stick charts were encoded, instr-

uctional tools to be memorised before ocean journeys.

 

Using kebab sticks, chopsticks, toothpicks, lolly sticks, knotted string, yarn, thread, and beads, we make a phenomeno-

logical "map of my bedroom", "my solar universe", "a map of my brain thinking", "my way home from school", and "a secret

island with buried treasure".

We have to backtrack during the second class - to learn how to tie a knot and our shoelaces! H., (7) (whispering) "I always

have to tie S.'s shoelaces for him, he can't do it". After about 15 minutes of fretting (and a little help from H.), S., (7) and F.,

(5) are joyfully, proudly "showing-off" tying knots and their shoelaces. H. beams, " ... happy to not have to do every knot

for S. anymore and use up my play time!"

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We tape our stick charts to the windows, delightedly noticing some of our lines (very coincidentally) follow the lines of per-

spective of the things we can see outside. "It is a stick chart knot of things around us!" (J., 6)

 

"Like an ocean radar, except it is in Bromley and not the sea". (G., 5) I mention that radars use the clock too (and that all

aspects of meteorology are based on a worldwide 24-hour clock called Zulu time (Z) or Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).)

"Look over there! At six o'clock (or 1800Z), H. is sitting at his desk!" We all turn to 1800Z where H., arms raised above his

head triumphantly "Yessss[es]!" and high fives S. and F.

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