Scrolling dive
Video, 2025
About the artwork
A slow slide downward, into the endless feed, where no bottom can be seen. This is scrolling as falling, diving as drowning — a descent etched into our collective visual memory. We watch a user “scroll” through reality, sinking into it, becoming less and less discernible with each frame. A reference to the ritual of infinite scrolling — automatic, semi-conscious, trance-like — akin to submerging in water with open eyes.
In the background: the silhouette of a falling body, trapped inside a pixelated “window” of the 2000s. Scrolling consumes the user, turning them into an element of the interface. They no longer interact with space — they merge with it. No longer a subject, but a part of the system. This is the Y2K aesthetic — not as nostalgia, but as diagnosis.
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underscores much of his art, which often highlights the serendipity of algorithmic mistakes and the nostalgia of outdated interfaces.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.