Junk #51 (Junk Machine)

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

ClownVamp

2024

NFT/Digital

Description

Interested in exploring how the use of AI models is infusing marketing with the biases of the past, the artist known as ClownVamp built a contraption called the Junk Machine, equipped with a robotics computer and a local version of SDXL Turbo (a lightweight AI model). When the viewer presses a button, the machine generates a piece of “junk mail,” which its built-in dye-sublimation printer spits out as a 6-by-6-in. (15.24-by-15.24-cm) print.

Junk #51 is one of 222 outputs that ClownVamp selected to mint in the Junk Machine NFT collection. It is disorienting and repulsive for a number of reasons. Like most of the women generated by Junk Machine’s onboard AI, the one here is young, white, and blonde. She dominates the frame with her wavy, blown-out hair, her perfect breasts, her penetrating and suggestive gaze. Yet her appealing characteristics stand in stark contrast to her disfigured extremities: her six-fingered hands merge with the dumbbells she’s holding, and she has three legs. These absurd elements remind us how our attention is misdirected from marketing dynamics, ingrained biases, and manipulative intent by artificial beauty. Junk #51 is a commentary on modern marketing that exactly represents what it so clearly disdains.