Verse Decodes: Jonathan Chomko on Colour Time Generative & Sync

Words by Jonathan Chomko

I’m really excited to share two new Colour Time works I’ve been developing for an upcoming show with Verse in London.

Colour Time Sync is a 20 minute long live-generated colour sequence, which uses clock time to synchronise the work for all viewers, allowing viewers in the gallery and online to inhabit the same temporal frame.

Colour Time Generative derives from Colour Time Sync colour data. Instead of animating it through time, Generative draws the data across time as a gradient. There is no fixed size for this generative collection - instead, as the pieces are minted, the gradient expands. Each buyer owns a section of a continuum, which is constantly shifting until the sale closes.

At the core of this series of work is a fascination with the passage of time; an attempt to replicate the imperceptible flow of time. As we can see the effects of time as dust gathering in a corner, change in Colour Time becomes evident as optical effects - complementary colour after-images creating colours that are not there, blurred edges of form and colour.

These works both play with time - in Sync, the binding to time turns the colour series into a sort of abstract timepiece. In Generative, the indicators of this timepiece are flattened into an two-dimensional representation, a dense gradient where time maps from left to right.

This gradient is then split using a novel generative sale mechanism - each token represents a slice of the whole gradient, and with each new sale the gradient expands. Expanding the decisive moment of a generative sale, both the buyer and the market become co-creators of the works.

I’ve made a video walkthrough of the two projects - jump to 1m40s for generative intro.

Below are some outputs from the Generative system, which will be on display in the gallery.

Verse Live will take place at Frieze No.9 Cork Street from 28 September - 1 October. Opening event from 6:30pm on 28 September.

The opening event will culminate with a talk entitled 'The Concept of Colour' with Jonathan Chomko, Zancan and David Batchelor, in partnership with The Digital Art Salon. RSVP here.