Artist Jeroen Van Loon sells his data


Dutch artist Jeroen van Loon is offering his complete DNA sequence for sale on cellout.me. This is the interview we did with him for our trend report Bright Underground

by Ellen, pictures by Jeroen Van Loon

Dutch artist Jeroen van Loon (29) is offering his complete DNA sequence for sale. Why that is, you'll read following this link. This project is a next step in Van Loons exploration of the borders between the digital and the fysical world. 

Van Loon’s journey could be considered fairly ‘atypical’. Unless graduating from a Digital Media Design course without touching a computer doesn’t surprise you. 

I interviewed him last year for the Slowcial trend in our trend report Bright Underground. "I began suffering from RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury) in my graduation year", he recalled. "A stabbing pain in the neck, painful wrists, stinging eyes, etc. It became impossible to spend any time at all behind the screen." Up until then, he had spent his whole life behind computer screens. As an artist, he had been "betrayed" by his own medium. So he radically stopped using his computer - from 280 to 0 hours a month - and decided to write a blog about it. 

The blog was an analogue one, which he shared with his followers via correspondence. In the blog he revealed what he experienced in his life without a computer or the Internet. “Even though I was closely involved in social media, when I stopped I didn’t miss them at all. Information suddenly becomes scarcer, you have to invest more time and energy in it… As a result you become more selective.” It was incredibly liberating: “without my computer there was nothing left and I was no longer concerned about anything.”

RSI made Van Loon reflect deeply on the role digital media play in our lives. He shared some of his impressions during his 2012 TED-talk, but he didn't stop there. 

This is only part of the interview, and though the rest is even more interesting it was way too long for the internet.  If you'd like to read on, send us an email and we'll transfer the whole transcript right away. 

Or you can buy our super interesting trend report Bright Underground, of course.