Waste Time Beautifully · C1

Cosmos — numbers in orbit

John Maeda for Shiseido, 1995 (Cal0.class) — rebuilt as a web component. Standalone copy, no build step.

Controls: hover to reshape every orbit — the axes track 1.5× the cursor's distance from each orbit's center; press and drag to pull a new loop out of the system; the mark at bottom-left clears them and replays the fly-in credit. Click the canvas first, then ESC toggles strip-move mode (the ground goes orange and the clock strip comes free).

The days of the month ride a rotated ellipse, today in red on the sweep hand, with a seconds odometer scrolling at the right edge. The month as a gravitational system, days as bodies in orbit, the user as a hand that perturbs the heavens. Time is periodic, not linear.

Spec

originalCal0.class + UniverseCal, orbit, eint, efloatsin (Java 1.1) dimensions400×300, black ground, Helvetica 10 collectionSFMOMA 99.550 revolution7,500 ms per sweep, phase = wall clock mod cycle — every orbit in lockstep forever; orientation wobbles ±10° on a 15,000 ms sine interactionevery mouse move (not just drag) restyles all orbits; press spawns a zero-axis orbit that inflates as the cursor pulls away period quirksa cursor-driven rotation angle is computed and stored but never drawn — a dead store in the 1995 bytecode; Mac Java Date bug detected and adjusted creditchars fly in at 800+80i ms from random scatter, hold 1.5 s, vanish; logo click replays tests38 (Vitest + fast-check)