Curiosity Before Certainty
- May 31
- 4 min read
Updated: May 31
On discovering digital art, building PROTO.logue, and learning to trust the unfamiliar.
Before many people tasted Rhône wines, they seemed unfamiliar. Before many people embraced farm-to-table cooking, it seemed unconventional. Every generation encounters new creative languages. Digital art may simply be one of ours.
The older I get, the more I realize that curiosity is often more important than certainty. The things that ultimately shape us are rarely the things we fully understand at the beginning. They are the ideas, places, people, and practices that invite us to look a little longer, ask a few more questions, and remain open to the possibility that something unfamiliar may eventually become meaningful.
Digital art entered my life that way.
Digital art is often misunderstood. It isn't simply an image on a screen, and it certainly isn't defined by whether it's sold online. Digital art encompasses photography, video, code-based works, generative systems, AI-assisted creation, animation, virtual environments, and forms we likely haven't invented yet. What connects them is that digital technology is essential to how the work is conceived, created, or experienced.
"Digital art refers to artworks created with digital tools, systems, or environments in a way that is essential to the work itself." — 100 collectors
My background is not in technology. I studied photography. I spent more than thirty-five years building restaurants, creating experiences, and working in hospitality. Paintings, photographs, sculpture, food, wine, architecture, music, and design all felt familiar to me. Digital art did not. I have always been drawn to things I don't fully understand. In many ways, that's exactly what attracted me to it.
When I first began exploring digital art a few years ago, I felt the same mixture of curiosity, confusion, excitement, and skepticism that many people experience today. New terminology, new platforms, new tools, and new ways of creating, sharing, and collecting art seemed to appear almost daily.
Yet beneath all of that technology was something surprisingly familiar: artists. Artists experimenting with new tools. Artists asking new questions. Artists using technology not as a replacement for creativity, but as another medium through which creativity could be expressed.
The more time I spent looking, the more I realized that digital art is not a niche category. It is simply the latest chapter in a long history of artists embracing new technologies to expand what art can be.
What surprised me most was the diversity of voices working in the medium. Photographers, coders, painters, designers, filmmakers, architects, musicians, and entirely self-taught creators all seemed to be meeting in the same space.
What fascinated me was not the technology itself. It was creative freedom.
As someone who works with photography, texture, transparency, color, layering, and collage, digital tools allowed me to explore ideas that would have been difficult, expensive, or impossible using traditional methods alone. Instead of replacing creativity, technology expanded it.
Behind the Scenes
Ironically, opening a space dedicated in part to digital art has reminded me that technology is often the least glamorous part of the process. I've been working on this project for six months, and in that time I've had no choice but to teach myself things I never knew anything about.
The initial months were dedicated to curating the exhibition — focusing on resolution sizes for the screens and working with portrait, landscape, and square formats. The goal was a cohesive display that integrated various methods, subjects, and styles while balancing different shades of white, gray, and black.
![wiring / screens / calibration - [ art by Ariadna Arnes - https://linktr.ee/ariadnaarnes ]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/c2bb4d_eeefc30d41bf42ef9e6dc6b55e8cfd3a~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_980,h_1307,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/c2bb4d_eeefc30d41bf42ef9e6dc6b55e8cfd3a~mv2.jpg)
The screens themselves look like televisions, but the settings are intense. Screens need calibration. We hired a wiring company that took more than three days to establish network connections for 14 screens in DEAD LETTER. I was surprised to see holes in the ceiling and hundreds of feet of wire everywhere — but networks need communication. In a public setting, systems must function reliably; they cannot fail during service. Hardware and software don't always align perfectly. Integrating the proprietary software to create collections that matched my aesthetic preferences added another layer of complexity.
As we worked to build a space that combines hospitality, collecting, digital art, motion, and exhibition in ways that feel seamless to the visitor, both the software company and I found ourselves adapting along the way. The last couple of months I've spent more time troubleshooting than curating. Yet those challenges are part of building a new kind of creative space.
Just as a gallery learns how to light paintings, we are learning how to present moving images, digital works, and screen-based art in a way that feels thoughtful, intentional, and welcoming.
The irony is that when everything works, nobody notices the technology.
They notice the art. And perhaps that is exactly how it should be.
"You do not need to begin with complete certainty, or even with a purchase." -100 collectors
You do not need to understand every technology. You do not need to know how a blockchain works. You do not need to know how artificial intelligence creates an image. You do not even need to buy anything.
You simply need to look. To pay attention. To notice what draws you in — the same way we approach a photograph, a painting, a sculpture, a garden, a glass of wine, or a beautifully prepared meal.
Curiosity comes first. Everything else follows.
As PROTO.logue and Dead Letter prepare to open their doors, I hope this space becomes an invitation to explore — not just digital art, but the many ways artists continue to expand the boundaries of creativity. Because art has always evolved alongside the tools available to it. Digital art is simply part of that continuing story.
Over the coming months, I'll be sharing some of the artists, works, and ideas that have inspired this journey. I hope you'll follow along.
A Few Resources
If this article sparks your curiosity, here are a few resources that helped me better understand the world of digital art and collecting:
Several definitions and quotations in this article are used with permission from 100 collectors.
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