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The Art Bank managed to draw Hookman away from his creative space just long enough for an interview, and we will never look at clocks the same way again.
Hookman is a master developer and has produced a few games as well, which you can hear more about in the interview. But it wasn’t until 2021 when Hookman embarked on his journey in the Cardano NFT space. Realizing there was no satisfying way to view his new NFT collection, he created a virtual gallery allowing anyone to view curated collections as well as any wallet contents or projects.
Shortly after, he approached Tyler from BitFins, who elaborated on his vision of a virtual aquarium. They spent the rest of the year bringing the aquarium to life as it stands today, where you can buy NFTs to fill your aquarium with fish and decorations, minus the tank maintenance.
Hookman enjoyed the work so much that he gave up his role as Head of Development at a software house and went all-in with Cardano. When TAB asked him about his decision, he responded, “It’s been a great decision! It allows me to work on more Cardano projects simultaneously!”. So it’s safe to say Hookman was hooked and all in.
Generative art is by no means a new concept, and you’d be surprised to learn that it goes all the way back to the 60s. Artist Harold Cohen created AARON in 1968, a series of computer programs that create original artistic images. You can see some of Cohen’s early creations on the Tate Museum website.
Clocks are on-chain code that runs in your browser, displaying correct local time as well as a UTC time toggle. The backgrounds of the clocks are designed to be soothing ambient patterns; these patterns are generated mathematically using various algorithms such as fractals. Each clock also provides access to my utilities, such as my Windows application to show NFTs on the desktop or on top of Windows.
Read more about on-chain generative art here.
Hookman created Block Clocks NFTs out of a desire to create NFTs that would be useful in the real world and in real-time (no pun intended). And, what can be more useful than a clock to tell the time as well as provide UTC information and a countdown timer to the next Epoch. But how was the question?
Soon after he came up with the concept of Block Clocks, he discovered WebGL shader code to render ambient backgrounds for the clocks. He had to learn an entirely new language to bring his creations to life. He quickly teamed up with aw0k3n algorithms to utilize the NFTs he bought as clock backgrounds, among others.
To give these Block Clocks more real-world use, Hookman also created Windows and Android apps, to allow people to add clocks to their backgrounds. He then extended the apps to support other images and on-chain NFTs too, making it more of a general-purpose NFT wallpaper app for all.
Current and future plans involve teaming up with the Block Generation to help bring to life their vision for a framework to help on-chain artists create NFTs without having full technical knowledge of how to write an HTML page and mint it on the blockchain.
We look forward to seeing that in the coming months! Hookman also has some collaborations with other NFT artists for future clocks in the works too.
We recommend watching the entire interview, but if you want to jump to a question that interests you use the links below:
1. Intro
3. What do you need to know to create on-chain NFTs?
5. How much do you interact with the blockchain?
6. What kind of utility can clock holders expect?
7. Tell us about your previous project, the virtual gallery.
8. What games have you developed?
9. Cool idea! Isn’t there a niche market for that?
10. Why did you choose an elevator loading screen to get into the gallery?
11. Can I connect my own wallet to view my own NFTs?
12. What else have you been working on?
13. Any plans to integrate the two projects?
Hookman has been an inspiration to The Art Bank, and we’ll be sure to update any future projects on this page.