2021-06-24 (Thinking of the stars)

13.5 x 13.5 x 13.5 inches / each piece (Various and Adjustable)

Analog Portable TV, 1.5” LCD Screen, Micro SD Card, Raspberry Pi, Stand, LED, E-Parts, USB Power Adapter + NFT Art from the Internet

In 2008, just before the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasting, I arrived in New York. Around that time, I began witnessing a quiet yet striking phenomenon on the streets—analog devices once seen as emblems of innovation, especially CRT televisions that defined the era of Nam June Paik, were being discarded with indifference. These scenes served as symbolic reminders of how swiftly technologies are forgotten and how easily they are cast aside.

Rather than merely repurposing these machines into art objects, I have been asking deeper questions: Where is technology headed? Can it evolve sustainably? And most critically, how can media art endure—how can it be preserved not just for today, but forever? These inquiries gave birth to Digital Being, and Thinking of the Stars is one of its ongoing manifestations.

Digital Being is a constellation of invisible entities reborn from obsolete technologies. Some engage with viewers through interaction; others operate autonomously, following the logic encoded within their original circuits. In the NFT collection Thinking of the Stars, these beings are reimagined as "Tele-Stars"—reborn through real-time streamed imagery of the sun, planets, and satellites. Each is imbued with a unique digital identity via NFT and IPFS technologies, existing as electronic lifeforms that drift between physical ruins and the digital ether, surviving in new, unexpected ways.

Of course, NFT and IPFS technologies are far from perfect and not free from the logics of capital. Still, I believe they offer a compelling alternative for preserving digital art in an age of technological acceleration and obsolescence. As a member of a preservation group in New York dedicated to the works of Nam June Paik, I’ve come to see that maintaining both the software and hardware of media art is not only a historical concern, but a pressing challenge for the present and future.

Digital Being is thus more than an artistic response—it is a proposition. It imagines new forms of life that can exist beyond human-centric paradigms, coexisting with and through technology. It is a search for a way in which art can continue to live, even after the machines have ceased to function.

Reference books: being digital - Nicholas Negroponte // Out of Control - Kevin Kelly // The Singularity is Near - Ray Kurzweil // SAPIENS - Yuval Noah Harari

Featured at Artnet // ArtDaily // New York YIMBY // SIGGRAPH Asia 2022

#digitalbeing #sustainability #probability #analogtodigital #coexist #digitalart #raspberrypi #videoart #newmediaart #physicalcomputing #reformation #hacking #cryptocurrency #cryptoart #nftart #nft #opensea