Little Brother, Flayed (Mordunkus)
Video, 2023
About the artwork
This is my exploration of how a family reacts when a member is punished by the law. Do you stand aside and let the process go? Do you fight? How would you show support to that family member, and at what point is the crime such that you do not show that support? Here, little brother, the smaller ball of meat, has its skin stripped away while the larger ball does nothing [visible].
No sound
Audio explanation
Listen to Mordunkus discuss this work.
If you have the tools to create any image you want, why would you just want to regurgitate the same art styles you've been force fed for your whole life? If you can tweak your output -- sometimes mathematically, as in "face minus eyes" or "goat plus eyes" -- to build something impossible in nature, why wouldn't you? Yet there are artists TODAY who make Impressionist art ("the filthy thieves with their forger's tools. No originality, so they have to steal!"). It doesn't have to be that way. A hundred years ago an Italian poet, FT Marinetti, wrote words so powerful they inspired painters and musicians. Dada poet Tristan Tzara inspired painters, sculptors, and photographers. Surrealist poet Bréton inspired all of the above plus filmmakers. Today's AI prompters are the poets of the day, using words to inspire visuals.
Mordunkus (because why not third person?) uses AI tools to bring you images unlike those you've seen before: abstract and surreal videos that often tickle your visceral sensibilities. Maybe it looks like a colonoscopy video with plants and machinery? Or is that a face? A chicken foot? Heavy on the WTF, Mordunkus does NOT Want to show you the same old thing. And almost to contradict that last sentence, the vision behind the images has been consistent over the [past two or three] years even as the tools have changed.
But is it "Art"? Marcel Duchamp answered that question already: who cares?
Negative Prompt: Signature, watermark, cartoon, face, skull, eyeball