Digitalism in Focus: An Interview with Cristina Schek & Jonathan Mitton – Part I
As Digitalism takes centre stage at this year’s British Art Fair, we wanted to create space for a deeper dialogue between artists, tools and ideas.
In this two-part interview, Cristina Schek and Jonathan Mitton, both exhibiting at British Art Fair at Saatchi Gallery (25-28 September 2025) in the DBA: Digitalism platform - Block 3, reflect on their artistic processes, the emotional logic of digital creation, and what it means to make work that is both contemporary and timeless.
Part I explores the personal: how each artist defines Digitalism, how their tools shape their practice, and what they hope audiences will experience when encountering their work this September at Saatchi Gallery. Interview conducted August 2025.
Part II to follow early September, expands the conversation the philosophical and cultural terrain: audience, influence, imagination, future vision and collector insight. It complements Part I beautifully by moving from inner to outer worlds.
These conversations draw inspiration from curator Rebekah Tolley’s essay “The Rise of Digitalism: A New Movement in Art” which offers vital context for understanding Digitalism not merely as a category, but as a condition, a way of perceiving, feeling, and making in the digital age.
Q&A (Part I)
1. What does Digitalism mean to you, not just as a term, but as an artistic condition?
Cristina Schek: “I used to think of myself as a Surrealist, and in many ways, I still am. But we’re living in the age of Digitalism now, and it’s changed the way I see, think and create. I am, at heart, the photo-sensitive kind; I think in pictures, I dream in layers. I started in the darkroom, where I could spend hours lost in silver and shadow. Photoshop gave me wings. It offered light as a brush, time as a texture, and an infinite surface on which to dream. It would be too hyperbolic to say that the digital changed my life, but it has certainly enhanced it.
Digitalism, for me, is not just a method but a state of perception. It’s about reclaiming imagination and slipping past the borders of certainty. It allows me to access unseen frequencies, to reimagine the world not as it is, but as it might be remembered or reassembled. Sometimes it feels like looking through an infinite lens into space; other times, like a close encounter with colour itself.
It has become the language through which I now express the surreal, where imagination and instinct can run wild without permission. It’s where joy meets purpose. And where light, not only as image but as idea, becomes my truest material.”
Jonathan Mitton: “For me, Digitalism represents the interface between human consciousness and digital tools - a narrative that's been evolving in my work since 1990. I started integrating computers into my artistic practice at the Royal College of Art, creating digital, pixelated patterns for a catsuit that I then made into holograms and lenticulars. From that early stage, digital tools and skills have augmented most of my artwork.
As an artistic condition, Digitalism is fundamentally about liberation. With artificial intelligence, you can have an idea and manifest it quickly - even if it's just a playful sketch. You can capture musical ideas, writing concepts, and visual thoughts that might not be the final result, but serve as a way to document your fluid creative process. This accessibility represents a democratisation of sophisticated creative tools that previously required entire teams or prohibitive budgets.”
2. How do your tools shape your work, whether that’s AI, the camera or code?
Cristina Schek: “My work has always been rooted in digital processes; montage, subtle manipulation, layers of image and intention. The camera remains essential, a kind of visual sketchbook. But the real shaping happens in the digital space, where I cut, layer and recompose. It’s a process that feels both instinctive and deliberate, almost like weaving light with thought. AI is a more recent addition, not the core, but a provocateur I invite in. I don’t treat it as the final image but as a source of surprise, a way to open new doors. I might take fragments, textures or moods and bring them into Photoshop where I continue the conversation. In this sense, AI doesn’t replace my process, it expands it. Maybe it’s the surprise I’m drawn to, the way it breaks familiar rhythms, helping me challenge the blinkers of narrative and habit. Quietly transfixed, mesmerising, sometimes strange, it pits the brain against the eye in a beautiful way. It enhances my process, not by replacing intuition, but by expanding it. It’s not about giving up control but shifting how I hold it, letting intuition shape intention, letting the unexpected disrupt the overly familiar. Digital creation for me is always a balance between clarity and ambiguity, direction and drift. The tools respond to how I move, but they also push back. And in that tension, something alive will surface.”
Jonathan Mitton: “You have to be very careful as an artist not to let the tools dominate the idea. Your work shouldn't be driven by the technology itself. I experienced this particularly when making digital music early in my career - I'd spend most of my time learning how to use the tool rather than developing the musical idea. The technology controlled me more than I controlled it.
But that relationship has completely reversed now. Today, after decades of developing my artistic practice and technical understanding, I can have ideas and immediately access tools to prototype those thoughts and test whether they're worth pursuing further. It's like having a master craftsman's workshop where every tool responds instantly to your creative intent. The relationship has shifted 180 degrees - now the tools serve my artistic vision rather than overwhelm it.”
3. Your work will be shown as part of the British Art Fair’s DBA: Digitalism platform. What do you hope viewers will feel or experience when they encounter your work in this context?
Cristina Schek: “I’m thrilled to be part of the British Art Fair’s DBA: Digitalism platform, it’s both an honour and an opportunity to join a movement that’s redefining how we think about art in the digital age. I hope viewers feel like they’ve crossed into a world that looks like ours but moves to a different rhythm, where memory, imagination and light shape the rules. My work isn’t about delivering answers, it’s about creating a moment of pause, a subtle disruption of the expected. Maybe they’ll feel memory stirring, or imagination catching fire. Maybe they’ll question what’s real and what’s constructed; and whether that distinction even matters.
Being part of the British Art Fair’s DBA: Digitalism platform is an invitation to push beyond definitions, to present digital artwork as both poetic and provocative. I think the platform encourages work that blurs boundaries and reimagines the role of digital art today. In this context, it allows my work to be seen not just as digital or surreal but as something speculative and sensory. I want viewers to feel the presence of light, of longing, of play. To experience digital art not as distant or disembodied but as something deeply felt, something that resonates beyond the frame. If I can offer even a brief sense of wonder or mystery, then my artwork has done its work.
Alongside Digitalism, a selection of my work will also be shown with the wonderful Cynthia Corbett Gallery and the Young Masters Art Prize on the ground floor at Stand 17. Earlier this year, I was awarded First Prize in the People’s Choice Award at Young Masters 2025 and received a Highly Commended mention for the Young Masters Rudolph Blume Foundation Acquisition Award. With a major Young Masters exhibition planned for 2026. Being part of Digitalism now helps extend that story, creating new conversations around identity, imagination and digital practice across different platforms at the fair.”
Jonathan Mitton: “I'm trying to create the experience of a journey between two minds - starting from the viewer's own single conscious state into the collective human mind.
The immersive space represents the dialogue between biological and digital awareness. The process to achieve this starts with an automatic painting, (a process of image creation that bypasses the conscious mind and delves into the unconscious) which I then feed into AI systems along with carefully crafted, open-ended prompts. Rather than being explicit (like requesting "a cat wearing a bowler hat"), I remain purposely vague to encourage the machine to hallucinate - a term in AI referring to when systems generate content beyond their training data, essentially ’dreaming’, prioritising the ‘visual algorithm’ of the painting over the textual prompt.
I then select the animation and stills that resonate with me, analogous to the Rorschach ink blot test, creating a feedback loop – a symbiotic relationship between biological and digital consciousness.
The resulting immersive videos and artworks create multiple entry points into this shared unconscious space, expanding the narrative journey beyond traditional gallery viewing.”
4. What does collaboration look like for you, either with other artists or with the systems and technologies you use?
Cristina Schek: “Collaboration, for me, often feels like a conversation with echoes of myself. Some works remain entirely within Photoshop, layered and sculpted by hand. In others, I feed my own images and compositions into AI. In a way, I plagiarise myself, using my own visual language to see what returns. It opens a passage between intention and accident, like entering a hall of mirrors, where authorship multiplies and bends with each reflection.
Photoshop, my primary tool for digital work, doesn’t respond back. It’s precise and obedient to my will. But AI introduces something else entirely: it’s a boomerang. I send something out, and what comes back hits me. Not with force, but with surprise. A version of myself refracted and newly lit. That’s where the idea of collaboration begins. AI isn’t an author in my work; it’s more like a provocateur or a distorting mirror. It offers back fragments, textures, atmospheres I might never have consciously composed. But nothing is left untouched. I extract what resonates, then rework it through Photoshop, layering, refining, reasserting control through intuition.
I’m not interested in replacing creation, I’m interested in expanding it. The work is shaped by my hand, my history, my instinct. I don’t surrender authorship; I complicate and distort it. What matters to me isn’t who made each element, but what the image becomes. Like the Surrealists, I believe in confusion, in the strange as a kind of truth.
I’m also grateful for the creative conversation I’ve been sharing with fellow artist Jonathan Mitton. We approach Digitalism from distinct yet complementary directions, both drawn to surrealism, to memory and to the poetic tension between technology and instinct. His curiosity and visual language have inspired me deeply, and I think our shared space - Block 3 - at British Art Fair feels less like a booth and more like a portal.”
Jonathan Mitton: “Currently my main creative collaboration is with artificial intelligence itself - not as a replacement for human creativity, but as a sophisticated creative partner that can access vast databases of human visual culture.
The collaboration with Cristina came about because we share both a surreal vision of the human journey as well as an excited childlike optimism about the technologies we use, both of us creating windows for our viewers to experience and enter alternate worlds.”
5. How do you navigate the tension between the digital and the tactile? Is physicality still important in your process or presentation?
Cristina Schek: “Even when I’m working entirely in the digital realm, there’s a strong sense of materiality in what I do. I treat images like objects, layered and textured, built slowly. The screen is not just a surface; it becomes a kind of canvas. Photoshop lets me sculpt with light, shape memory, drag colour like a brushstroke. There’s a tactile intimacy to it, even if there’s no physical trace.
Before I begin, I perform a quiet ritual: I sit at my corner desk beneath a bright window, clean my space, wash my hands and wait a bit until my mind is calm and clear. I allow the work to grow naturally, even if I’ve planned the composition, I leave space for instinct and change. In that way, it’s less about control and more about flow.
Nature is a recurring theme in my work, not just for its beauty, but as a source of knowledge. I draw from the trees, rivers, clouds and the mountains of my native Transylvania, not to depict them directly, but to echo their atmosphere. In an age when technological innovation pulls us ever further from the natural world, I believe it’s more vital than ever to wander, to move slowly, curiously through our surroundings. To observe, absorb, and let the world shape us back. I make images to be wandered through, like forests. My images might be digital, but I want them to feel alive, something you don’t rush through, but dwell in. A place you might get lost in for a while.
What interests me isn’t the divide between digital and physical, but the space where they blur. Digital tools allow me to suggest the sensation of touch, to create something that feels like it could be held or inhabited, even when it can’t. It’s a ritual of seeing. Digital in form but textured like memory or skin.
I don’t create work meant to live on a screen. My images are printed in very exclusive, limited editions, carefully produced to preserve their nuance and presence, on tactile, archival paper that will likely outlive us, framed with museum-quality art glass. I want the physical artwork to feel like an artefact, something intimate and enduring.”
Jonathan Mitton: “Having started my artistic life as a sculptor I understand the irreplaceable value of tactile experience. Since the late 80’s I have been combining holograms and lenticulars with wood and steel structures, creating a harmonious dialogue between the physical material and the ethereal visual experience of the hologram.
My Digitalism artworks follow this trend - the three dimensional structure of the framed print come to life through augmented reality - becoming portals through which viewers can travel into digital mindscapes. This breaks the conventional boundary between the physical and the ethereal, the frame is transformed into digital light, similar to closing one’s eyes to fall asleep and dream.”
See both artists at the British Art Fair, exhibiting within the DBA: Digitalism platform (Block 3), Saatchi Gallery, London, 25–28 September 2025.
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Cristina Schek is the ‘photo-sensitive’ kind. She thinks in pictures; her imagination is always in focus. A Transylvanian Surrealist Digitalist based in London, she creates conceptual portraits that explore identity and the nature of representation, drawing inspiration from literature, film and art history. Often working as her own model, Schek appears in a range of guises; whimsical, romantic, and rich with visual puns that are as playful as they are profound.
Completely self-taught and far removed from traditional or documentary styles, Schek sees the camera as merely a tool. Her passion lies in storytelling, following intuition into the unknown, layering and manipulating her photographs into creative montages. Subtle digital alterations, often developed over months, result in meticulously composed works influenced by the Surrealists and Old Masters.
Her work has been shown internationally at major art fairs including the London Art Fair, British Art Fair, Art Miami, Palm Beach, NY Art Fair, LA Art Show, as well as in museum exhibitions such as Elmbridge Museum and Kingston Museum in London. In 2025, Schek was awarded First Prize in the Young Masters People’s Choice Award and was Highly Commended for the Young Masters Rudolph Blume Foundation Acquisition Award. As a result, she will present new work in a special exhibition in early 2026.
Previous accolades include the Young Masters ‘Focus on the Female’ Award (2021), and in 2023, she won the W4 Fourth Plinth with The Ceiling In The Sky, a monumental 4x4m public artwork installed in West London.
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Jonathan Mitton is a pioneering multimedia artist whose four-decade practice spans holographic art, 3D imaging technology, sculpture, and AI-assisted creation. A Royal College of Art graduate with distinction, Mitton has consistently operated at the intersection of consciousness, technology, and human perception, anticipating and helping to define new directions in contemporary art.
His ground-breaking holographic work includes the revolutionary "Time Machines" - motorised display devices that became iconic in the field - and the controversial "Hardcore Holography" exhibition (1994), later included in the Barbican's "Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now" (2007/8). As both artist and inventor, Mitton developed the Mitton Linear Rail 1, a precision 3D imaging device that successfully bridged commercial technology with fine art practice.
Collaborative projects include stage design for Echo & The Bunnymen's international tour (1992) and founding the Surreal Vintage movement (2012-2025). His work has been exhibited internationally from Art Miami to the Barbican, with pieces in collections including the Museum of Holography (Washington).
Currently, Mitton pioneers AI integration with traditional practice through his "MetaMorph" project, developing "visual algorithms" - automatic paintings that seed AI-generated animations exploring consciousness and collective memory. His work investigates the playful tensions between authentic human experience and culturally constructed identities, using 1950s consumer imagery as archaeological material for understanding contemporary digital consciousness.