Ruins.exe
Video, 2025
About the artwork
Against the backdrop of a devastated city, under clouds of smoke, stands a giant figure made of cursors—alien and untouchable, like a system error invading reality. This is not just an apocalypse, but a metaphor for our present, where catastrophes turn digital, and pain and chaos are indistinguishable from system failures. Here, the city is memory, and the cursor figure is a virus rewriting everything we once knew. The question remains: who is the real destroyer—humanity or the new digital era?
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underscores much of his art, which often highlights the serendipity of algorithmic mistakes and the nostalgia of outdated interfaces.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.