Time Without A Clock

Click Here to see the Animated Version

This is part of a project on the subject of Prometheus. For those of you who don't know the myth of Prometheus, here is a brief summary (for those of you who already know all this, just skip to the next paragraph):

Prometheus was a titan who helped create humans from clay, and then stole fire from the gods to give to humanity, pissing off Zeus so that he had Prometheus chained to a mountain for eternity while every day an eagle came to eat his liver, which would regrow every night because Prometheus was immortal. After 10,000 years, Zeus let Hercules free Prometheus in exchange for vital information.

So for the project we were urged to think about his experience as he was chained to the top of the mountain - what he thought about, what happened to his mind and body, etc. So what I thought about was how Prometheus would've measured time, and if he had a clock, what would it have on its face; days, months, seasons? And so, the idea to create Prometheus' clock emerged, and eventually grew into this.

The inner circle of the clock shows the splitting of the day into morning, noon, sunset and night, the day and night being divided by the outline of the Caucasus Mountains, one peak of which Prometheus was chained to in the myth. The middle circle depicts the lunar cycle, and the red-gold circular border of the clock is the oroborous, or the serpent eating its own tail. The corners are the seasons - winter (snow), spring (rain), summer (clouds), and fall (falling leaves) - which also correspond to times of day - winter is night, spring is morning, summer is afternoon and fall is twilight. They also show some of  the types of weather Prometheus would have experienced. The chains (other than being a handy way to divide the four seasons up) represent not only Prometheus being chained to the mountain, but also how we are all bound by the passage of time. And finally, the hands of this clock are styled after eagle feathers to represent the eagle that came to torment Prometheus daily, and the little thing in the very center is supposed to be an eagle eye. 

All of this was done in Photoshop, while the feathers (in the animated version) were brought to life with Flash.

All images are copyright Genevieve Alberti, please do not redistribute without linking back here and giving credit, and do not distribute commercially without permission.