Digital Immigrants
Any immigrant who lives in a foreign country long enough begins to identify with two different cultures, but never entirely with either one. In their new country, they can never completely fit in. And the more they begin to, the more they lose their ties to their country of birth. Over time, immigrants become people who are neither from their old country nor their new one, but from somewhere in between. They gain the ability to be a part of two cultures, but in exchange are rejected by both. In America, they will always be the foreigner, and in their own country, they will become the American.
As an artist and photographer, this collection should have been the one with which I started my journey into NFTs. It was always intended to be, and it certainly would have been the most fitting. Digital Immigrants evokes the nostalgia of my youth as an immigrant to the United States….someone caught between two cultures. It is also an homage to a generation caught between the physical and the digital world.
Digital Immigrants encompasses a 5-year period of my work prior to transitioning to digital photography. This work was shot (almost entirely) on a 1970’s Pentax ME Super that used to belong to my father. All of it was shot on film (primarily 35 mm and Medium Format Kodak Tri-X Pan, with a handful of images shot on infrared film). These images began as negatives that were developed using chemicals in a darkroom. Many were printed on photographic paper using manual dodge and burn techniques. These physical, printed pieces were always intended to be the final product.
Almost two decades later, the negatives have been scanned and converted to high resolution digital images. The camera that captured these images is a remnant of the pre-internet world. I grew up in this world and then lived through the rapid technological evolution of the 1990’s and 2000’s. Anyone born in my generation feels perfectly comfortable with technology but is also old enough to remember the analog world. The majority of people born 10 years earlier will never feel quite comfortable in a digitally native world. And anyone born 10 years later is too young to remember the world before the internet. This was a digital migration that Generation X was squarely in the middle of.
The images in this collection were captured on the other side of a historical boundary. Then they crossed a digital border and became something else. While they may never be native, they have assimilated and made a new home for themselves; a better, more permanent home on the blockchain. What came out is neither analog nor digital, but something in between.
FORMAT
This project is divided into blocks of work consisting of 16 images in each block. 10 blocks will be inscribed over the next four years. Subsequent blocks will be inscribed between now and 2044 as I curate my own portfolio of film spanning the 5-year period (1999 – 2004) during which it was shot. If the community behind this project becomes vibrant enough, the goal is for an undefined number of future blocks to be curated by the community prior to inscription.
Additional blocks will be inscribed on a 4-year schedule, halving every 4 years with partial blocks rounded up. 21 total blocks will be inscribed on the following schedule:
2024-2028: 10 blocks
2028-2032: 5 blocks
2032-2036: 3 blocks
2036-2040: 2 blocks
2040-2044: 1 block
Digital immigrants are coming en masse. They bring with them new cultures, strange customs and unique perspectives. Change is scary, but don’t be afraid. The border will permanently close on this collection in 2044. Besides…whether you know it or not, we are all immigrating to the blockchain.