Somewhere between a shrine, a sculpture, and a sentient screen, HYPNOS stands watch. Created by artist Karborn in collaboration with his father, HYPNOS is more than a physical object—it’s a living, reactive meta-media artifact. Anchored by a hand-sculpted bronze bust of the ancient Greek god of sleep, and animated by lasers, sensors, and an ever-looping archive of GIFs, the piece blurs mythology and machinery, analog and digital, sleep and surveillance.
👁 HYPNOS 🌙 is an interactive meta-media sculpture centred on a bronze bust of HYPNOS, the ancient Greek god of sleep.
The god gazes across a void, toward a glowing stack of machines...
A loud hand-clap or sudden movement awakens HYPNOS — its laser-drawn eyes fixed on the CRT ahead as it loops through thousands of iconic animated gifs.
Left undisturbed, HYPNOS drifts back to sleep — its eyes shift into crescent moons, as the CRT transitions to a live feed of the sculpture quietly watching, and dreaming, of itself.
HYPNOS features a curated selection of thousands of iconic GIFs, chosen from my own decade-long (and ever-growing!) archive - the humble gif is the most fundamental of web formats.
This living collection expands over time — a growing body of digital folklore, looping endlessly before the eyes of an electric god.
HYPNOS was exhibited at SuperRares Gallery, OFFLINE... located at 243 Bowery, New York as part of the exhibition titled foreverAgain, paying homage to the early internet .GIFs and other animated works.
