Diurnal — A Day, Scrubbable

Diurnal

A day you can hold still.

The day is the one thing everybody shares, and the thing we notice least. It happens to us while we are busy. I wanted to take one out and look at it properly.

So — drag the dial. The light moves. Sunrise comes late in Madrid and early in Delhi. Colour drains out of the sky at noon and floods back at six. The stars turn about a point that depends on how far north you are. Somewhere in the dusk, the city starts switching its windows on.

Why I made it

Not to draw a sunset. To find the rule that makes one.

A picture of a sunset is finished the moment you make it. A rule keeps working — point it at any city, any hour, and it is still right tomorrow. That is the whole appeal of experimenting: you start out wanting a thing to look right, and you end up understanding why it looks that way at all.

Underneath

Real solar geometry, so sunrise moves through the year. Real time zones, so daylight saving lands on the correct day. Stars that turn fifteen degrees an hour about a pole set by your latitude. One page, no images, working all of it out while you watch.

experiments.rahulghai.com

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