Final Approach.exe at 30,000Kb
Video, 2025
About the artwork
Final Approach.exe at 30,000Kb is a scene straight out of a Y2K nightmare: airplane passengers, frozen mid-fall, are covered by the infamous blue screen of death. Panic, a loss of trust in reality, and old Windows bugs have become flesh and a new skin. Among the hysteria and techno-apocalypse, one figure remains perfectly calm—a person made of cursors, casually reclining, hands behind their head, as if preparing for sleep rather than disaster.
Sound design
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underscores much of his art, which often highlights the serendipity of algorithmic mistakes and the nostalgia of outdated interfaces.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.