⏱️ The One-Second Clock

A challenge in auditory perception. Can you hear the exact time - hour, minute, and second - in just one second of sound?

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🎯 Goal

Design a 1-second audio cue that encodes the full current time:

• Hour
• Minute
• Second

With no screen, no numbers, only sound.

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🔍 Concept

This is an open, creative challenge. There’s no single solution. The aim is to explore how audio can represent time clearly and instantly.

Ideas already explored:

• Pitch: 12 semitones = 12 hours
• Rhythm: Recognisable time signatures as modifiers
• Voice: Dual-layered speech for minutes (e.g. “4” and “5” overlapping = 45)
• Morse code: For seconds, layered by pitch or rhythm
• Audio effects: Reverb, modulation, timbre for encoding metadata such as AM/PM

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🚧 Work in Progress

This is not a product, it's an experiment. There are no rules except clarity and elegance. The only hard constraint: the entire clock must fit in 1 second of sound. The 1 second of sound may be padded with silence.

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📁 Submissions

Contribute your take on the One-Second Clock:

• Create a folder inside submissions/your_name_or_alias/
• Add your audio file(s), notes, diagrams, midi or code
• Add a README.md inside your folder explaining your design
• You're welcome to include multiple versions in your folder, please update the README

Make a pull request and describe your approach.

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🤝 Contributing

• No need to ask; fork the repo and send a PR
• Experimental ideas, partial work, or diagrams welcome
• Use the discussions/ tab or GitHub Issues to propose ideas or ask questions
• No commercial use, no monetisation, this is a free, open exploration

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🌍 Licence

MIT for code, CC-BY 4.0 for audio. Credit your sources if you use external material.

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🔗 Related Concepts

• Sonification
• Psychoacoustics
• Audio mnemonics
• Morse code
• Perceptual compression
• Accessibility design

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🧠 Author

Created by englowe Inspired by the idea that time can be seen - but can it be heard?