Benoit Böhnke tells time differently through visualisations that play with colour and motion

Most people can tell the time, but can they tell it differently? The Paris-based graphic designer and co-founder of mire studio, Benoit Böhnke, combines visual experimentation with coding practices in his exhibition project 12:12, which attempts to visualise time in alternative fashions. Questioning the clock, an object that is nearly as old as time itself, various interpretations of how time looks, how it feels and how it sounds are presented through twelve digital projects, whilst a second series features guest designers and artists showcasing their own takes on time.

Exploring the relationship between time and technology, 12:12 is beautiful and inventive. Rooted in typographic and chromatic experimentation, two central components of Benoit’s design practice, alternative clocks and mesmerising animations explore the colour, motion and form of time-telling. “The history of time-measurement tools is rich and deeply connected to technological developments,” says Benoit. “In the specific context of graphic and digital design, John Maeda’s 12 O’Clocks, from 1996, remains a key milestone, and 12:12 positions itself as a continuation of this lineage.” As well as that, Christian Marclay’s The Clock plays a great role – a 24-hour montage consisting of thousands of film and television clips depicting clocks and other references to time, synchronised to the local time. Benoit carries the ongoing fascination with how time exists in our visual culture and continues challenging it.

Benoit’s visualisations double as screensavers, digital objects that Benoit considers as poetic artefacts of digital design. “They might be among the most familiar digital artefacts for most people. I find a certain poetry in the idea of artistic pieces that come to life precisely when the computer is inactive,” says Benoit. “This is why these projects don’t necessarily have a functional purpose, but instead foreground a contemplative dimension.” In other words, 12:12 takes something as sprawling as time and combines it with the constantly evolving art of the motion based screensaver (which just so happens to commonly present the time).

There’s a lovely musicality to Benoit’s animations, which sometimes look like sound-wave visualisers, bouncing with liveliness. Often presented in monolithic, horizontal forms that resemble modern touchscreen phones, 12:12 draws parallels to the ways we commonly see time represented: in increasingly digital and customisable ways, rather than the common analog wall clock. “The clock is a familiar and universal object, and I saw it as an opportunity to imagine alternative interpretations of what it could be as a graphic designer,” says Benoit. From modular blobs that join to create numbers, to cosmos-like patterns that eviscerate linear time-telling, 12:12 is as exciting as it is playful – and adds to a number of thought-provoking art pieces that attempt to understand time, as fleeting and ephemeral as it is.