Open Sea
Video, 2025
About the artwork
To stay alive in the era of digital flooding is like learning to breathe underwater. Or at least — to appear alive, like an avatar in the ocean of information, a user immersed in the digital stream.
A paradox of the digital age: we seek peace in noise, presence in absence, reality in the simulacrum.
Mouse cursors, assembled into the shapes of digital fish, drift past the body — intruding with the insistence of an interface. They are symbols of surveillance, algorithms, and digital control — the flora and fauna of the virtual ecosystem. This isn’t just cyberpunk aesthetics; it’s a visual code of anxiety, a residual trace of early internet culture: the cursor as pointer, as control, as footprint.
Sound design by don't Buy
Audio explanation
Listen to don't Buy discuss this work.
Don’t Buy is a visual artist who creates digital paintings, videos, and GIFs using artificial intelligence and mixed media. Embracing a moniker that itself subverts consumerist language, he approaches art-making with a hacker’s spirit – repurposing AI technology to explore the beauty of errors and the aesthetics of early digital culture. In his work, glitchy abstractions and retro graphics converge to address themes of identity and imperfection in the online era. “When a cold, mechanical machine makes a mistake, it becomes a little more human,” Don’t Buy notes, reflecting his view that technological faults can reveal human qualities. This philosophy underscores much of his art, which often highlights the serendipity of algorithmic mistakes and the nostalgia of outdated interfaces.
A participant in Fellowship’s AI art program, Don’t Buy has presented projects that encapsulate his ethos. Notably, his series 404: SELF NOT FOUND (2024) is an assemblage of AI-generated imagery probing our entanglement with digital identities and the nature of error. Through a mix of dark humor and experimental technique, he transforms mundane clicks and computer glitches into artistic meditation.