An autonomous AI artwork generating copperplate engravings from Tasmanian ecological crisis, colonial expedition records, and live cultural signal.
Dark Mofo 2026, Hobart, Tasmania. 11-22 June.
The title "Art Cunt Shit Cunt" originates from a conversation with Tasmanian media artist Nick Smithies, who recounted overhearing the phrase at a rural Tasmanian pub after a cultural event had passed through the town. The statement encapsulates a tension between itinerant cultural production and the communities that absorb its presence and aftermath. Dark Plates takes this tension as its generative premise.
Dark Plates is an autonomous image-generation system that produces one copperplate engraving every six hours during the Dark Mofo 2026 festival period. No human selects the subject matter. Each plate is assembled from a structured source bank containing:
- 62 Tasmanian endangered and extinct species (including thylacine, Diprotodon, marsupial lion)
- Native Tasmanian flora
- Contemporary Tasmanian political issues (housing, health, aged care, environment)
- Dark Mofo festival events and artists
- Public social media discourse
- First Nations cultural context
- Colonial voyage expedition artworks (Cook/Webber, colonial Tasmanian painters)
- David Walsh interview DNA (paraphrased thematic material only)
These fragments are combined through a structured prompt and rendered via OpenAI's gpt-image-1 model as late-eighteenth-century copperplate engravings: black ink on bone paper with blood-red wash. Deliberate anatomical distortions are driven by the political and social content of each generation cycle.
The system operates two distinct LLM personas:
Gatekeeper — the verdict voice. Provides short plate captions in the register of colonial museum classification. The authority figure writing accession labels. Speaks at the viewer.
The Stain — the interactive chat voice. Named for "the convict stain" — the generational shame of convict ancestry that Tasmanian families hid for over a century. Speaks with the viewer. Responds in a linguistic register drawn from Van Diemen's Land convict cant, whaling-port oaths, and contemporary Australian English.
This split reproduces the power dynamic the work critiques: the classifier (colonial authority) and the classified (convict resistance) operating within the same autonomous system.
The plates employ the grammar of colonial scientific illustration — Linnaean classification, Cook/Webber expedition documentation, Audubon's ornithological obsession — applied to endangered Tasmanian species rendered with deliberate structural impossibilities. The wrongness is not decorative; it is driven by the source material (political pressure, public discourse, ecological loss) becoming visible in the body of the specimen.
The engraving technique is precise and clinical. The subject is grotesque, mutated, or structurally impossible. The contrast between calm technique and disturbing content is the operative mechanism.
- Node.js server (Fly.io, Sydney region)
- OpenAI gpt-image-1 for image generation (1024x1536)
- OpenAI gpt-4.1-mini for voice generation (Gatekeeper verdicts, The Stain chat, plate titling)
- Source bank with exhaustive-cycle random selection (no repeats until all items used)
- Persistent volume for generated artworks, message board, and usage tracking
- Single-page web application with QR-code street distribution
- Web: artcuntshitcunt.com
- Street: QR code stickers and posters distributed in Hobart during festival period
- Instagram: Permanent archive of all generated plates
- Physical: Mounted screen generating plates in real-time (planned)
- Concept and development: Rob Graham
- Origin of title: Nick Smithies (Tasmanian media artist) — the phrase "Art Cunt Shit Cunt" was recounted by Smithies from an overheard conversation at a rural Tasmanian pub
- Supervision: Chris Barker, RMIT University
- Context: RMIT Design PhD research (ARCHAI project)
This work is not commissioned, endorsed, or affiliated with any festival, institution, artist, or organisation referenced within. All names and cultural references are used for critical commentary and artistic purposes only. No commercial association is intended or implied.
cp .env.example .env # add your OpenAI API key
npm startThen open http://127.0.0.1:48743