Gotaminute is a monumental art project that redefines the chronicle of human existence. It is built on a simple yet profound premise: to create a single, unique work of art for each of the 525,600 minutes that compose a year. Each artwork identifies and honors the most significant event—whether famous or infamous, triumphant or terrible—to have ever occurred during that specific minute in time. The WTC attack is forever bound to 8:46 AM; the moment COVID-19 was declared a pandemic receives its own minute award. History is no longer just a narrative; it is a curated collection of definitive moments.
The project’s ambition is to create what few works have achieved through the millennia: pure informational art. In the spirit of ancient cave drawings or the
universal information conveyed by Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Gotaminute seeks to leave a permanent, language-agnostic record for future generations. It is a time capsule designed to tell the biggest story of all—the story of our existence, bounded by Earth’s gravity and measured in the passage of time. It is an impartial witness, acknowledging that the events which define humanity are not always celebratory, but are always significant.
The execution of this vision is a landmark fusion of art and science. Each of the over 500,000 artworks is a mathematically precise, computer-generated cartographic drawing of Earth. To guarantee the absolute uniqueness of every single minute, each piece is a composite of 2-3 different Earth projections layered into the same 2D space—a technique requiring the invention of more than ten new cartographic projections. This generative system is driven by a staggering dataset of over a billion attributes and rendered with a palette of more than ten million color combinations, ensuring that each artwork is as complex and unique as the moment it represents.
Ultimately, Gotaminute argues that art and history are not separate disciplines but are reflections of one another—a mirror and a map. The immense computational complexity serves a single philosophical goal: to elevate a moment from the abstract flow of time and give it a permanent, physical form. Each piece is not merely a picture of an event; it is a data-rich, scientific artifact of its time. It is a project where art becomes the ultimate historical record, and history becomes the
raw material for the most ambitious art ever conceived.