Cyclic Calendar
An app, which represents time in a cyclical, not linear ontology. While still being convenient and familiar, it helps to rethink human everyday life in terms of the cycles. It also extends the perception by showing cycles of moon and sun. Interpretation of these cycles is left to the user's consciousness and subconsciousness.
Why is it relevant?
Time is one of the key elements of the human world picture. However, time itself and its influence on the culture is much less susceptible to the reflection than, for example, space. The view of the researcher, both from natural sciences and humanitarian, usually, politely bypasses this essence. Time is an axiomatic category.

Time is linear in the worldview of a modern civilized person - it is directed from the past to the future. It is a single arrow on which all events, people and objects are strung. In addition to this, of course, this arrow points up. And tomorrow, of course, will be better than yesterday.

We want to critiсize the linear image of time. The denial of cycles is the deepest manifestation of fear in the worldview of a civilized person. The fear of not being fast enough in a race with a competitor, technology, and, ultimately, with yourself. The Fear of death. Finally, the fear of nature, which we oppose. We are individually and collectively mortal, it impossible for our growth to be umlimited - all of these is a consequence of us being a part of nature. And in order to comfortably fit these fears into the worldview, it is required to deny the natural in oneself, including the cyclical nature of time.

In the world picture time is connected to the language. This language of non-human entities, such as the forest, have fundamentally different rhythm compared to the rhythm of our civilization. It seems to us that nothing happens in the forest. Well, the branches sway in the wind. Only a few of us have ever seen how a tree falls (not when we break it, but when it falls by itself from the wind). Rationally, we know that the forest is changing, growing, dying, and reborning, but this rational knowledge does not help the synchronization of rhythms at all. It is only possible to have a common language if the systems have a common rhythm. Therefore, the more our civilization accelerates, the more difficult it is for us to understand the forest. This is why apart from working on cycles, we also work on the representation of living system rhythms scales.

Ecophilosopher Andrew McMillion write in his paper "Ecosystems resonance": "Growth is simply one step in ecosystems resonance, and exponential growth is only one very short phase in countless cycles of waves of ecosystem evolution. The human obsessed with exponential growth is entirely natural. When we see patterns like the Fibonacci sequence appear in nature we are instinctively attracted to them. From flowers to seashells, humans have consumed, worshiped and emulated the exponential. The idea of beauty itself has been linked to the golden ratio. What is often conveniently left out when we observe the natural world and try to apply its principles to building a better, more harmonious culture for the future is that these exponential growth spirals don't grow on forever. They come to an end. As the sun's energy fades in the fall most pollinators die. Flowers mature to seeds, most of which are eaten or rot before they can start new waves of life."

We are based on Uliana's Kovalenko research "Rhythms as an approach for sustainable development". This study compares the rhythms the pre-industrial and the industrial era. The analysis is based on anthropological research of two different pre-industrial communities and sociologists' works of the 20th century. Ultimately, it makes an effort to show how desynchronization of humans' rhythms and rhythms of their environment leads to a loss of sensitivity and the rhythmic problems — problems of the body, society and ecology.

We are open to collaboration. For example, you can sign up for an interview and share your Google Calendar and / or similar tools user experience. Or join us in some other way. If so, email us at technoashram@futuref.org.
Moodboard
Project roadmap
Winter 2019
Currently, the project is in the research stage. Though the idea of the extension may seem very simple, it feels important that this simplicity should be the result of processing the depth and wisdom of indigenous cultures, whose worldview includes cyclical time. We invite you to join our research or helps us by sharing your user experience with the Google-calendar and/or similar tools.
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- How to talk about the moon?
- Does candle have a shadow?

Spring 2019
- Prototyping of developed practices and techniques in another project
- An attempt to introduce a cyclical calendar practice during an event in Bulgaria which is part of the Living Temples project.

- Is there a cycle without dynamics?
- Why it is not acceptable to talk about death?

Summer 2019
The first iteration of cyclic calendar application design and release

- Why does time flow differently?
- How to feel the sphericity of the sky?

Project team