Turnt 2017

Curator: Woah, check that out—the autumnal tones, the way the river winds through it… is this a fever dream? Editor: That's "Turnt," a digital artwork created in 2017 by the artist known as Beeple. Curator: Right, a forest sunset gone vaporwave. Gives me a strong sense of nostalgia, but for a place that maybe only exists online. Editor: Beeple, or Michael Winkelmann, achieved greater renown in recent years with his foray into NFTs, but works like this from his "Everydays" project touch on ecological themes with undertones of the digital sublime. Think Frederick Church, but glitchy. Curator: The glitchy-ness is part of what grabs me. There’s this feeling of being on the verge of losing the scene entirely, like a corrupted file you still somehow remember. Is it paradise, or a broken screen? Editor: Perhaps both. The amber and copper hues, against the river which seems almost like a vein, evoke concerns about ecological degradation even amidst a seemingly idyllic landscape. The romantic ideal meets digital anxiety, maybe. Curator: So, the natural world refracted through a screen, kind of like how we mostly experience “nature” now anyway. Editor: Precisely. Consider how often we experience landscapes through mediated platforms, constructing a very specific sense of place based on curated visuals. It interrogates what we think about when we use words such as, wild, untamed, or natural. Curator: It's strangely comforting and unsettling all at once. This digitized nature isn't so far from my daily world. It's made me realize how constructed my own perceptions of the outdoors have become. Editor: Yes. Beeple is holding a mirror to how we see nature and our relationship to it in this digital age. It reminds us that "nature," even at its most aesthetically appealing, is inseparable from the digital landscapes that define much of our existence.