For about two years, the Doomsday Clock was at 90 seconds to midnight, the representative stand-in for global catastrophe resulting from manmade technologies.
A couple of weeks ago, though, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — that's the group behind the clock — moved its hands forward. By one second.
But before they brought us to 89 seconds to Armageddon, it was time for a new clock.
And the organization tapped RIT industrial design professor Juan Noguera and his former professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, Tom Weis, to draw up and fabricate it.
For Noguera, the project posed an unusual design problem.
"Even though it's a literal harbinger of doom in a way, right, we wanted it to be an object that remains hopeful and positive, and it would be used for many years to come," Noguera said.
The old clock — one you might have seen many times over the years — was basically a whiteboard on an easel. It wasn't sturdy, and there was always the risk of it tipping over during announcements, Noguera said.
"They wanted something that was a little bit more solid, that was going to be a little bit more photogenic, so that it would maybe call attention to the time a little bit more and it would get them a little bit more media coverage," Noguera said.
He and Weis set out to design something that was close to the message the Bulletin aims to convey each year. The group was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and University of Chicago scientists who played roles in the Manhattan Project. According to the organization's website, they created the Doomsday Clock two years later as a way "to convey threats to humanity and the planet."
“The purpose of the Doomsday Clock is to start a global conversation about the very real existential threats that keep the world’s top scientists awake at night," Daniel Holz, chair of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and professor at the University of Chicago said in a late-January news release. "National leaders must commence discussions about these global risks before it’s too late. Reflecting on these life-and-death issues and starting a dialogue are the first steps to turning back the Clock and moving away from midnight.”
But the clock is also meant to remind people about the issues that man-made technologies like nuclear weapons have caused in the past, Noguera said. So he and Weis used a mix of new and old techniques to design and make the clock.
Everything started with drawings made by hand, but instead of using them to fabricate physical prototypes, they used generative AI technology to come up with renderings of different designs and materials.
Noguera produced the clock itself on the RIT campus using a large 3-D printer. It contains 200 magnets and the pieces are modular, so the clock can be adjusted in the future.
Weis made its wooden pedestal by hand using traditional woodworking techniques. The pedestal features hand-bent wood panels, hand turned spindles for its legs, and an ash veneer.
The duo aimed for a design that was monolithic, easy to read, and durable. Something that would grab people's attention but wouldn't distract from the message.
"The moment is really not about the clock design," Noguera said. "It's about the time, right? It's about the greater discussion of ... how things are going in the world, right?"
The clock resides at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists headquarters in Washington, D.C.
