Interface
Still, 2025
View full-resolution artwork ↗About the artwork
What do we see when we look into the digital mirror? The portrait of a modern human is no longer just facial features and eyes looking inward. Our “self” has become an endless interface: windows, notifications, cursors, layers, glitches. Every day, we update our digital shell—but do we lose something of our real selves in the process?
Where does the human end and the interface begin? To be yourself today is to constantly switch between roles, screens, and states. Our emotions, thoughts, even memories pass through digital filters. To be modern is to learn how to navigate between ourselves and our interfaces, not to lose what’s authentic in this endless stream of updates and alerts.
Perhaps the true art of our age is preserving something genuine—something unbreakable—beneath all the layers of interface.
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underscores much of his art, which often highlights the serendipity of algorithmic mistakes and the nostalgia of outdated interfaces.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.