Jake Fried
The human side of tech
“The more technology advances, the more human we become.”
Many people think that technology is making us less human. But digital artist Jake Fried thinks the opposite. “Now in the NFT space, and as digital art communities grow, it’s like, we’re all in this together”, he says. “Art is essentially a communication device. It’s about humanity. This is what I love about technology and the internet”. This sense of human intimacy comes through in his art too. His hand-drawn animations are expressive and magical. They have a surrealist feel that plays around with rhythm and perspective. Even though you watch the films on a screen, they’re deeply human and em...
Many people think that technology is making us less human. But digital artist Jake Fried thinks the opposite. “Now in the NFT space, and as digital art communities grow, it’s like, we’re all in this together”, he says. “Art is essentially a communication device. It’s about humanity. This is what I love about technology and the internet”. This sense of human intimacy comes through in his art too. His hand-drawn animations are expressive and magical. They have a surrealist feel that plays around with rhythm and perspective. Even though you watch the films on a screen, they’re deeply human and emotional.
Fried’s process is the heartbeat of his practice. Making his short animations takes thousands of hours. He first draws on paper and scans the drawing into the computer. Then he draws again onto the same piece of paper and scans again. After that, he repeats the entire process over and over. “It’s like a stream of consciousness over 1000s of hours", he says. "It’s about expression. I’m doing the same thing painters do, the same thing poets do, the same thing dancers do – the format and the medium is just playing with what time is and how movement and transformation work”.
Jake Fried (he/him) is an American artist born in 1984. Today, he lives and works in Boston.
Jake Fried has worked in many different professions in the arts, and he sees them all as a broader part of his practice. “My life is about making my art, teaching art, talking about art”.
Fried wants to create a new art world where there is no divide between digital and physical art. “The bigger mission in my life is to tie the traditional and the physical and the NFTs and make it all one thing”, he explains.
