TheDigitalCoy (American, b. 1980), also known as Coy Byron, is a multimedia poet who combines AI-generated imagery, 3D animation, music, illustration and voice into audiovisual poems. He began sharing this work publicly as an anonymous artist in 2021, revealing his identity in 2024.His pieces are organized around a recurring narrator, Argus Panoptes, the all-seeing figure of Greek mythology, used as a lens onto private and intimate stories.,
Before working as an artist, Byron studied politics at Princeton University and spent two decades in business, consulting and enterprise AI.,His genesis collection, Publicly Private, pairs family heirloom photographs with poetry, music and illustration to tell private moments from his own life. It was first shown at the Oculus Building in Manhattan in 2022, in a show curated by ArtJedi during NFT NYC.Byron has said he coined the phrase Publicly Private in 1998, in the anonymous chat rooms of the early internet. He later applied the same idea to Web3, where people can present themselves publicly while remaining pseudonymous.
The Poems in Space Cycle, partly inspired by Constantin Brancusi's Bird in Space sculptures, turns stills from Byron's AI multimedia poems into moving images voiced by their own narrators. One entry in the cycle, I am Karen, was selected from more than 150 artists for the Obscura DAO and MakersPlace AI Art Hackathon at NFC Lisbon in 2023.There, TheDigitalCoy created work live alongside artists including BLΛC, Illustrata and DVK the artist, drawing on a poem by Sasha Stiles for pieces later made available on MakersPlace.TheDigitalCoy has also taken part in public conversations about AI and poetry, including a Unit London panel with the poets Sasha Stiles and Ana Maria Caballero on bringing Allen Ginsberg's work into Web3.
In 2023 Byron collaborated with the photographer Serap Görünme on “Diptychs”, a group exhibition on Foundation.app. In 2024 his work appeared in the group exhibition “Beyond” at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., and in the Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose's 43rd Annual Art and Benefit Auction.
