Jonathan Chomko’s practice spans generative systems, moving image, installation, and interactive media, using technology as a way to make abstract experiences perceptible. Across his work, Chomko repeatedly returns to questions of time, memory, repetition, and human attention—how meaning accumulates slowly through duration, rhythm, and sustained observation.
In Buying Time, Chomko transforms the structure of a single day into a living visual system. Composed of 1,440 fully on-chain works—one for every minute in a 24-hour cycle—the series functions simultaneously as a clock, an animation, and a meditation on temporality itself. Each work corresponds to a precise moment in the day, treating time not simply as something measured, but as a material capable of being shaped, stretched, and experienced.
Viewed sequentially, the works form a continuous 24-hour animation. In its grid form, however, the project reveals a broader compositional logic: every minute becomes part of a larger visual field, while the present moment remains highlighted, anchoring the viewer within the flow of passing time. The effect is both structural and deeply psychological, creating an acute awareness not only of the work itself, but of one’s own duration spent with it.
Formally, Buying Time abstracts the familiar language of clocks into sculptural gestures. Clock hands elongate, dissolve, and reconfigure into rhythmic forms that retain traces of their original function while moving toward something more fluid and expressive. Through this process, systems of measurement become systems of feeling.
The work draws inspiration from Christian Marclay’s seminal film The Clock (2010), a 24-hour montage constructed from cinematic depictions of time. Like Marclay, Chomko uses duration as both subject and medium, inviting viewers into a heightened awareness of the present moment. Yet where Marclay assembles fragments of collective cinematic memory, Chomko builds an entirely generative temporal architecture—one that unfolds continuously and autonomously on-chain.
Bio
Jonathan Chomko (b. 1988, Canada) is an artist working with and against technology. His works examine the seam between physical and digital worlds, exploring how digital forces translate…