The passage of time is rather hard for one to notice while it’s happening. Seasons change gradually, climate change creeps at such a slow pace many actively deny its reality – even changes to a person we are close to are hard to perceive when we see them daily. Red Hill Studios, best known for educational and health games and behind the documentary “Exploring Time", have launched an iPad app. Painting With Time, the gives users 14 remarkable environments to explore the concept and its impact.
In the gallery are pastoral scenes, urban landscapes, even people, and we are invited by the simple GUI, to select a scene and then use a finger to paint it. The tubes in this app, however, don’t contain paint - they contain time. In minutes, days, seasons, or years users blend the effects of time right onto the image and then slice it in myriad ways to explore the juxtapositions. It's time-lapse photography with an interactive twist.
The results can be beautiful like seasons changing in a forest, amusing like playing with facial hair growth, and some are eye-opening like the glacier retreat in the arctic. Painting With Time is an aesthetic, creative, and mind-expanding app, ideally suited to starting a new year, and it’s free.