Conceived as a work of post-photography, “Objkt of Time” leverages a custom-built application, a performative physical process, and the architecture of the blockchain to investigate the value we place on moments. It questions not only how we record time, but how we might collectively agree on what is worth remembering.
Each image is the result of a somatic process, not a snapshot. Using a bespoke phone application of my own design, the works are formed through an accumulation of visual data over a period of time, guided by the physical performance of my body in a specific place. A slow drag of the hand, a rotation around a subject, or a vigorous shake becomes the authorial gesture. The resulting image is therefore a trace of a physical event, a digital tapestry woven from the interplay of artist, algorithm, motion, and subject. This method reframes the camera from a passive eye into an active, world-brushing tool.
The algorithms at the heart of this process possess their own unique, non-human gaze. They see the world not as a collection of recognisable objects, but as a dynamic source of light, colour, and form. A church is not a building; it is a source of shadow and intersecting planes. Bins in an alley are not refuse; they are a palette of warm evening light. In this way, the subject is deconstructed, becoming the raw material for a new composition. The work is not a picture of a thing, but an image formed with it, revealing an underlying aesthetic reality that our own eyes are not trained to see.
This exploration extends to the social and economic life of the artwork itself. Each day, one piece is minted on the Tezos blockchain as an open edition for 24 hours. If uncollected by the community, the image is burned—an act of programmatic forgetting. Collecting becomes an act of communal curation, a form of ‘Proof-of-Memory’ where the community collectively decides which moments are preserved on an immutable ledger. The secondary market becomes the theatre where the value of these shared memories is collaboratively built and negotiated over time.
Ultimately, “Objkt of Time” explores a fundamental tension in the act of recording. As I once wrote in a daily note, “Will I remember it like it was, or as this is? You can only remember it like this is.” The images are not merely records of memories; they are powerful aesthetic interventions that become memories in their own right, overwriting the original sensory experience. The project is a sustained inquiry into how we construct, value, and share our experience of time in a digital age.
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