The atomic unit of digital art is the pixel. Whether an artist constructs digital images that distract us from this tiny mosaic of lights, or they lean into the blocky grid, the pixel is the foundation either way. In a new series called PXL DEX, Kim Asendorf confronts the simplicity and beguiling complexity of the building blocks of digital images. PXL DEX manages to pose provocative questions about the simultaneously material and ephemeral nature of digital art, reveals surprising perceptual qualities of digital objects, demonstrates how artworks create their own internal systems, and functions as a sort of digital jewel box–a virtual object for collecting yet more virtual objects. Asendorf lays bare the foundations of this young medium, offering insights into the nature of digital objecthood.

PXL DEX consists of 256 works, each an abstract 3D animation called a Deck that can be purchased as an NFT through a custom website. The animations consist of a matrix of colored pixels in an isometric grid over a black background. The points pulse, shift and warp in ways that seem orderly, but exhibit no discernible pattern. The distortions are endless, but they never loop. Each piece has a distinct color palette, but these hues are shown only as dots that dance over the dark, the pulsing animations of each Deck are insubstantial, thin, and delicate. The precise density of the matrix of dots is a variable that can be changed in a number of ways. First, the animations can be manipulated on the screen by scrolling to zoom or clicking and dragging the virtual objects to rotate them above the black void, there are also preset “camera angles” and a viewing mode that automatically rotates. Rotation allows the viewer to align and overlap the pulsing pixels, creating clusters of symmetry and density. Zooming in and out changes the overall size of the virtual object, but the individual pixels each remain the same size, so that making the object smaller makes it appear more dense, while zooming in and making it larger makes it even more diffuse, airy, and barely visible. The density of pixels can also be manipulated within an individual Deck. Collectors can determine how many points the animation will contain when they purchase it, by determining how many PXL tokens to include. A low number will yield an expression of the animation algorithm that is barely visible, while approaching the mint maximum of 500,000 pixels will produce an iteration that is dense and fuzzy. An additional 500.000 PXL tokens can be minted by the Deck holder through a special smart contract function after the initial purchase. Even if the NFT later changes hands, the 500,000 PXL allowance remains.

Asendorf's work has long been interested in cutting to the visual, conceptual, and computational core of what digital art is made of. Past projects like Alternate (2023) and Monogrid (2021) used bespoke pixel sorting algorithms to create pulsing, never-looping 2-D animations of color that were both surprising and restrained. His work pushes to the edges of what computer screens can display, without succumbing to the temptation of being gaudy, overwhelming, or trite. To watch these pieces unfold is to understand what a screen is capable of. PXL DEX employs some of these same rendering tricks, but extrudes them into the third dimension.

Unlike the material freedom enjoyed by artists of more traditional, physical media, artists working with code to make images appear on screens are limited by the screens themselves. These constraints can be the impetus for innovation, but compared to the pages of a novel, the cinema screen, or the canvas, the screens on which digital art appears are both rapidly changing and relatively young. In order to think long term, the digital artist must accept that the screen is both a limiter and unknown quantity. Asendorf's work typically scales to the native resolution of the screen on which it appears, meaning that it both adapts to mobile displays and will evolve visually as the overall resolution of screens continues to expand. At the same time, PXL DEX, along with other works, composes abstract images from individual pixels whose precise size is determined by the screen on which they appear. Rather than creating images that are at the mercy of the evolving nature of screens, Asendorf fully leans into this contingency. The works are processes that work in harmony with whatever screen happens to display them. PXL DEX is a series of digital objects, but unlike most images displayed on screens, it's also a system that reveals the objecthood of the screens on which the works are displayed.

PXL DEX, with its built-in ability to purchase more tokens and increase the density of the animations, is not just a set of moving images. This is a system designed with a level of user interaction that gestures toward a game without fully embracing playability. Digital art, particularly when made from the ground up with custom code, lends itself naturally to the kind of broad conceptual questions that move past the visual content of a work and straight to the heart of what a thing is and what it does. The animations of PXL DEX are beautiful and entrancing, but this is not a screensaver. This is a series that probes the borders of what screen-based work can be, which also involves the viewer/collector in a way that pushes beyond perception into collaboration.

The owner of a Deck NFT has the ability to add more PXL tokens to the work. This alters the work, adding density. It also functions as a meta-commentary on crypto and NFT collecting. A Deck NFT is a bespoke wallet of sorts, a container for PXL tokens. PXL DEX reduces both fungible and non-fungible tokens to their abstract minimum: a single pixel, a single point of light that can be kept in a virtual box. At the blockchain level it's technically possible to add infinitely more PXL to a Deck, but eventually it will strain the ability of any computer to render the animation.

Kevin Buist, 2025