This post is a compiled snippet from a Twitter thread that I've transported over here for posterity. The original thread started here: https://twitter.com/b_cavello/status/1257194010122182661

The funny thing about a tweet like this is it comes out of a long thread of thinking about history and linguistics and preserving knowledge. twitter.com/b_cavello/status/1255579448541241345

For a while, I’ve been fascinated by history and our relationship with time and the realization that we will be history and what we make now is what we have the chance to be remembered by.
twitter.com/b_cavello/status/1168241054941732864

In particular, I was reflecting on one of the challenges described in the Ten Thousand Years problem of language systems shifting dramatically such that chronological order might become difficult to communicate.
99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years

I was actually originally toying with ideas about pop-up books and other moving-pieces media that might communicate time, but then I realized there are much bigger (less fragile) moving pieces in our solar system.
Chronological order could be communicated through light and shadow

It’s a common trope in tomb-raiding movies to have some sort of reveal when a beam of light aligns perfectly with some sort of slit or lens, and certainly there are real physical inspirations for this type of design from history.

But something that seems interesting to me to explore is having the scene actually change and evolve as the sun moves through the sky.
Do you know of any examples like this that exist?

Alt text: Animated GIF demonstrating how a scene changes as sunlight moves, illustrating solar-aligned architectural design