From 23 October to 27 November 2026, I’m presenting Loop at Galerie A+E in Paris, curated by Marie Dussart. The exhibition brings together 12:12, a series of twelve digital experiments on our relationship to time: generative clocks that reinvent the way we tell the time using the tools of graphic design. The opening takes place on Friday 23 October, during Art Basel Paris week.

Approach
I’m a Paris-based graphic creative coder and designer, co-founder of mire·studio and a teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts de Bretagne. My practice is built around designing generative graphic systems: rather than fixed images, I create sets of rules that produce visual forms in constant evolution. Programming is both my research tool and my production tool. This research explores questions at the intersection of graphic and digital design, such as on-screen reading, dynamic lettering and interactivity. 12:12 is part of this ongoing work: here, time itself becomes the input that drives each system.

12:12, a series of digital clocks
12:12 is a series of digital works that visualize time and question our relationship to it through visual systems. The clock is a familiar, universal object. As a graphic designer, I saw it as an opportunity to imagine other interpretations of what it could be. I built numerous prototypes before selecting twelve pieces that felt both diverse and coherent. Many are grounded in typographic and chromatic experimentation, two central components of my practice. The series explores time through the tools of graphic design: typography, color, motion and form. My aim is to use time as a material for designing systems in constant evolution.

Lineage
The history of time-measuring instruments is rich and closely tied to technological developments. In graphic and digital design, John Maeda’s 12 O’Clocks (1996) remains a key milestone, and 12:12 positions itself as a continuation of that lineage. The project also follows in the footsteps of Karel Martens, a major reference for me. Since the late 1960s, he has made clocks that extend his research into printing and rasterization. He also publishes a new calendar every year, another ongoing exploration of time through the tools of graphic design. I also like the idea that these pieces reawaken the screensaver as an artistic form, in the wake of O-R-G, David Reinfurt’s studio, which publishes screensavers by artists and designers, including a clock by Karel Martens. Screensavers have become somewhat forgotten digital objects, rarely considered in the history of digital design. Paradoxically, they may be among the most familiar digital artifacts for most people. I find a certain poetry in artworks that come to life precisely when the computer is idle. This is why these pieces don’t necessarily serve a functional purpose; instead, they foreground a contemplative dimension.

Loop, the exhibition
With Loop, the series becomes an installation. The clocks travel across six screens: every minute, one of them moves from one screen to another, while a new, still-unseen clock enters the cycle. Every ten minutes, a “happening” interrupts the cycle: a single clock takes over all the screens for about a minute. A sound design accompanies the loop. A ticking that grows more and more present builds up to this moment, then gives way to a more instrumental sequence before everything settles back down. The exhibition’s guiding idea is to turn watching time into a collective experience. Now that we each check the time on our own phones, Loop brings the clock back into a shared space, where we can watch time pass together. I will able to share more images from the installation by the 15th October.

The project so far
12:12 was featured in It’s Nice That. The project was shortlisted at the International Creative Awards in Glasgow and will be shown at the Chaumont International Graphic Design Biennial (Biennale internationale de design graphique).

Practical information

Most pieces incorporate random elements (colors, shapes, behaviors) that keep the compositions in constant transformation. Each one is built in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This technical choice offers great flexibility: the clocks adapt to any screen format and to a variety of contexts, from a single screen to a constellation of displays, or public spaces such as transit areas and waiting rooms.

Project Page | Benoit Bohnke | Instagram