Homepage
Video, 2025
About the artwork
What is a “homepage” for a human being? Hundreds of thousands of years ago, home was a cave, then a field, a city, the earth beneath our feet, the sky above our heads. Today, home is not just a place we live in, but also an entry point into a vast digital world. Home has become a mirage that appears with the press of a key: “homepage.”
But what happens when our shared home—whether physical or digital—fills up with glitches and bugs? Can humanity live on a planet that more and more resembles an unstable operating system, where every error isn’t just a glitch but a fatal crash?
Maybe the problem isn’t only in the world, but within ourselves. Home isn’t just walls; it’s the fragile space between failures, a place where you can hit “restart” and try again.
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underscores much of his art, which often highlights the serendipity of algorithmic mistakes and the nostalgia of outdated interfaces.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.