MARFA, TX.- Conceptual artist ClownVamp debuts a new immersive installation and artwork series The Junk Machine. Exploring the power of AI to proliferate biased images that permeate culture through advertising, ClownVamp exposes the uncanny corruption of visual culture in the AI era. The exhibition is centered around a shiny, stationary, candy-pink robot outfitted with a pixelated LED screen and a slim-mouthed printer, The Junk Machine, that jettisons infinite low-res advertisements or “junk mail” generated by AI using open-source software similar to AI models used in contemporary marketing technology. Generated near-instantly and sourced at hyperspeed from the open-source AI models, the junk mail outputs reflect historical, racial and gender biases that we are often blind to and proliferate in AI training data; highlighting characteristics of the high life—from glistening cars to sexy bodies and addictive substances. The resulting junk mail is both hyper-futuristic and nostalgic, rendered in a 1980s aesthetic that is both familiar and sinister. Ultimately, The Junk Machine offers a sharp critique of both the ubiquity and distortion of AI as well as its reflection of human consumer culture in a grotesque and humorous mash up. The junk mail prints will be available to visitors of the exhibition free of charge. On view at Do Right Hall in Marfa, Texas November 14 - 17 during Art Blocks Weekend the installation will include The Junk Machine Generative AI Robot, a drop of 222 generative high-res NFTs, a printed selection of the high-res works, along with immersive projections and video works.


ClownVamp, The Junk Machine (Robot), 2024 Retrofitted NVIDIA Jetson AGX and DNP Printer. Plywood and Acrylic Enclosure (20” x 19” x 20”), Photo by Raul Menjivar.

“My perspective on AI holds two truths at once,” states ClownVamp. “I find its ability to radically remake creativity deeply exciting, but the ways these tools are increasingly being used in marketing and advertising, to me, feels inherently sinister and dark–both in how it further reinforces the biases of the past and with how it hyperdrives these images into our visual vocabulary with limitless generations.”



Showcasing the slick eye-catching content generated by the AI, ClownVamp underscores the inherent bias of these technologies that generate images. The Junk Machine creates infinite images that ultimately showcase a mutant combination of vice, vanity, and gluttony. For ClownVamp, “advancements” in technology are an enduring fascination in his creative practice, through which he continues to explore the context through which AI serves as a tool versus a weapon—distorting our visual, psychic, and social culture—for which he encourages us to develop an ever more discerning eye.



THE JUNK MACHINE INSTALLATION

From a pink-lit room strewn with assorted 1980s ephemera, we are invited to approach The Junk Machine, which prompts us to press a large, tantalizing red button, after which an instant, unique 6” piece of AI “junk mail” is generated and printed and available to the public for free. Within this pink lacquered, toy-like monitor is a compact NVIDIA Jetson supercomputer programmed with the early open-source AI model SDXL Turbo. The Junk Machine is programmed using open-source AI models, similar to what is found in contemporary marketing technology.

Even without specific demographic prompting, the machine consistently generates white attractive models who aim guns, flex muscles, and pop pills—glancing sensually adrift with toothy smiles. As with much AI produced content, the glossy first glance belies eerie and unnatural morphologies: heads sprouting from lanky legs, deformed limbs, taglines sputtering into incoherent phrases, and hands morphing into lobster claws. In bridging the aesthetics of the past and present, ClownVamp investigates the societal corruption and bigotry that fester within the “random” ways technology interpolates and conflates data.



THE JUNK MACHINE NFT DROP

While The Junk Machine is designed to proliferate endless low res junk mail, ClownVamp has also curated 222 high res upscaled works from the outputs, which will be minted as a 1/1/X NFT series. These curated and upscaled outputs, hand-selected by ClownVamp to best represent the conceptual framework of The Junk Machine will be minted at random via a custom designed website by Transient Labs. 200 will be available at a cost of .088 ETH each. Collectors will also be allowed to order face mounted acrylic prints of their NFT at cost, a selection of ten of these prints will be showcased at the installation as artists’ proofs. Onsite at Do Right Hall, all 222 upscaled output images will be projected in large-scale.



The NFT mint will be via junk.clownvamp.com, with presale for existing collectors opening on November 14, at 10AM ET and public mint opening November 15, at 10AM ET.



SELECTED VIDEO WORKS

Further exploring the role of AI in advertising, the exhibition will also feature ten videos that use actual off-the-shelf marketing software to create video advertisements that showcase the ease of creating misinformation, confusion, and unethical practices. By creating fake advertisements from this software, the artist exposes the dangerous potential of these “harmless” tools.



ClownVamp is a conceptual artist who uses a combination of narrative and AI techniques to examine the socially constructed nature of our reality. His work has been exhibited in New York, Paris, Los Angeles, Miami, and Geneva. His solo show Chester Charles: The Lost Grand Master opened in New York City in 2023. ClownVamp and his work have appeared in Artnet, Outland, Surface Magazine, RightClick Save, and more. An avid collector of AI art and a member of the MAIF art collective, he lives in New York City with his partner and a very silly 10-year-old corgi.