> A t-shirt is not a digital medium so the rights holders don’t get to extend their monopolization of speech to a screen print of an unintelligible pattern of 1s and 0s.

Can you point me to a ruling where this form of expression is successfully defended via fair use?

Seems unlikely that a judge would agree that a simple transformation between "digital" vs "non-digital" medium avoids copyright infringement (ex: if I produce a digital image, I definitely maintain copyright over digital and non-digital forms of that image; you can't just start printing and selling posters of my image).

You could try to argue that the change of medium is transformative, but that's not a generic argument for "digital" vs. "non-digital"; that's particular to the circumstances of the case.