competitions
‘Money’
Oct 2023
Artists were invited to submit works on the theme of ‘money’ for the second Prompt Forum AI art competition. The submissions explored themes such as class, wealth, gentrification, social progress and capitalism.
See the winning submissions and artist reflections below.
1st Place
Ruby Screws
Ruby Screw’s depiction of a golden laughing face faucet positioned against Times Square appears to be both a nod to and a critique of the values epitomized by the Bull of Wall Street sculpture.
While the Bull of Wall Street embodies the relentless optimism of capitalism (often characterised by rising share prices), Ruby Screw’s golden face, with its sardonic smile faucet, offers a more sinister take on an economic system that depends on man’s insatiable thirst for more.
The configuration of multiple conduits converging to serve one dominant face, can be see as a critique on the prevailing mindset of individualism but also underscores the undeniable, yet often overlooked, interconnectedness that underpins our progress.
Ruby Screw’s piece can be seen as a scathing visual critique of a system in which self-interest and greed eclipse collective well-being.
Click on the images to enlarge gallery.
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Ruby Screws
02
st.freaktion
03
clint enns
Artist Stament: “I once heard Martin Prechtel, speaking of his village in Guatemala, explain, “In my village, if you went to the medicine man with a sick child, you would never say, ‘I am healthy, but my child is sick.’ You would say, ‘My family is sick.’ Or if it were a neighbor, you might say, ‘My village is sick.” No doubt, in such a society, it would be equally inconceivable to say, “I am healthy, but the forest is sick.” To think anyone could be healthy when her family, her village, or indeed the land, the water, or the planet were not, would be as absurd as saying, “I’ve got a fatal liver disease, but that’s just my liver–I am healthy!” Just as my sense of self includes my liver, so theirs included their social and natural community.
The modern self, in contrast, is a discrete and separate subject in a universe that is Other. This self is the Economic Man of Adam Smith; it is the embodied soul of religion; it is the selfish gene of biology It underlies the converging crises of our time, which are all variations on the theme of separation -separation from nature, from community, from lost parts of ourselves. It underlies all the usual culprits blamed for the ongoing destruction of ecology and polity such as human greed or capitalism. Our sense of self entails, “More for me is less for you”; hence we have an interest-based money system embodying precisely that principle. In older, gift-based societies, the opposite was true.” -Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics
2nd Place
st.freaktion
st.feaktion’s image offers a commentary on the corrosive nature of man’s obsession with wealth.
The exaggerated skeletal face, fervently consuming US dollar bills, underscores the hollowness that can result from one’s relentless pursuit of money.
This image, along with others in st.feaktion’s series, offers a haunting observation of the dehumanising effects of unchecked capitalism.
Click on the images to enlarge gallery or on the arrows to scroll to other images in the series.
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Ruby Screws
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st.freaktion
03
clint enns
Artist Stament: With the exaggerated images I describe a negatively connoted view of the topic of money.
Money or spaces of consumption serve here as a symbol for the system of modern capitalism and its consequences. This system, based on the pursuit of material gain and the irrational belief in infinite (economic) growth, has a profound impact on our society and the individual, as it encourages and rewards greed, exploitation, inequality and ultimately violence.
Ethics and morals atrophy due to short-sightedness and short-termism. We live in a Western hedonistic tech bubble that negates or misunderstands finiteness and causality. We are all a part of this mill, whether we want to or not, swarming compulsion.
Still, I have to laugh…
3rd Place
Clint Enns
Clint Enns’s AI generated image can be seen as an allegory on the trappings of wealth.
In Enns’s image, a man is both protected and confined from the outside world in a room padded with money, perhaps, alluding to the dual nature of wealth as both a shield and a shackle.
Click on the images to enlarge gallery or on the arrows to scroll to other images in the series.
01
Ruby Screws
02
st.freaktion
03
clint enns
Artist Stament:
Where should we put people who are obsessed with the accumulation of wealth? Doesn’t it seem like a mental illness to be more concerned with money than with other people. Why isn’t there a show like Hoarders, but with billionaires?
honorable mentions
