artist: David Koh

title: Doomscrolling

portfolio: https://www.cellestialstudios.com

David Koh is an artist and filmmaker who manipulates digital media to produce expressionist and poetic new media artwork. David is most interested in exploring themes relating to the formation of personal identities and cultural narratives in an internet driven world. He often dwells on the topics of cinema, narrative, identity, and multi-perspective viewing in the network age. David uses a range of digital techniques to create work spanning from digital paintings and video art to mixed reality projects. Born in Singapore and raised in the United States, he currently works and resides in Brooklyn.

Doomscrolling (or doomsurfing) is the act of consuming an endless procession of negative online news, to the detriment of the scroller's mental wellness. In the heart of the pandemic in 2020, doomscrolling became an endemic issue. The social isolation combined with endless internet scrolling resulted in addictions to overconsumption, leading to restless nights, depression, anxiety, and fear.

The emotional highs and lows of doomscrolling is brought on by social media feeds which juxtaposes Covid-19 with cute cats and news headlines from the other side of the world with family photos of your friends and relatives. This piece attempts to capture some of the disorder of this uniquely pandemic-era internet experience by jumbling up incoherent narratives and in-between emotions.

In this 30 second looping piece, sound-bits play and are cut off short as cartoon clips and cats are mixed with videos of atomic bombs, forest fires, and more. All the media used meditates on the fear and anxiety present in early 2020 when we were stuck at home with our own internal and eternal thoughts. While doom seemed to be present outside in the world, doom also brew internally within us.

This work was exhibited in the Museum of Wild and Newfangled Art NFT Show, which took place from February 1 through April 30, 2022. The show features artworks from the 174 artists that were exhibited in mowna's first year. Current international artists working in a wide range of artistic mediums. High quality artists and diverse artwork. Innovative new technologies, experimenting in the art and museum space, and paying artists for their work. While the future of NFTs is unclear, mowna acknowledges the NFT space as a new opportunity for art. The show has been added to mowna's collection, which is available for viewing online at https://www.mowna.org.

The winner of this auction will receive a 1/1 limited edition NFT, minted by the museum. 70% of the sale will pay the artist of the NFT for their work, with the remaining 30% paying for the creation of the museum platform. The winner will also unlock a free one month membership code for the museum.