Fading December

Who I am

Hey ! My name is Tara Hächler and I am a media design student from Switzerland, interested in audiovisual, real-time and 3D experimentations. I like to explore themes through a political or sociological aspect, using digital media as a space for critical reflection and playful experimentation.

Idea

Since the project started on December 1st, I thought: why not create an Advent Calendar? But at the same time, this period is often exhausting, expensive, and not that enjoyable. While everything revolves around being together, we (or at least I) often end up trapped in stress, fatigue, sickness, mulled wine, and no money left for the last presents to buy.

This is why I decided to build a fading calendar, one that becomes gradually greyer as the days pass and Christmas approaches. The decreasing contrast reflects the decline of excitement and personal well-being, slowly fading as time goes by.

Process

I’ve created 24 GIFs, starting from black and white and gradually shifting into greys with decreasing contrast. Each GIF displays the day number. I aimed to make them all different, though I sometimes revisited the same technique and experimented with new inputs and parameters. Most of my inspiration came from Tim’s website and his courses.

I really enjoyed playing with these numbers, and having the goal of creating all 24!

A favorite piece of code

I used this part of the code several times to create the back-and-forth effect in the GIFs. It allowed me to build a smooth loop for those that didn’t naturally loop on their own.

  int t = frameCount % 360;   
  if (t > 180) {
    t = 360 - t;              
  }

Find me on…

• Instagram
• Check all the GIFs

Thank you for reading this far, and maybe, Merry Christmas?

Next project

At the end of the project, I remembered a curiosity I recently had with the displays showing bus numbers on Geneva’s buses. They’re always so colorful, and I once wanted to photograph them all and collect them.

Working on the calendar and creating animated number GIFs gave me the idea to recreate those bus number displays — with the same vibrant colors, but this time animated. And who knows, maybe I could even pitch the concept to the city’s public transport service.