The Junk Machine (2024) is a new work by conceptual artist ClownVamp, opening October 2 and running through December 7, 2025. The exhibition will kick off with an opening reception on Saturday, October 4.

This interactive public work explores how AI is corrupting advertising. At the heart of this installation is a physical, very pink robot, charming at first glance, unsettling by design. Press its oversized red button and the machine whirs to life, generating and printing AI-generated “junk mail” using a local copy of SDXL Turbo, a lightweight AI model stored on an embedded NVIDIA Jetson computer. 

No cloud. No Wi-Fi. Just endless AI-generated imagery. Each print is created in real time using one of 40+ gluttony-inspired prompts and a unique seed, then printed on 6x6-inch dye sublimation paper. The results are often humorous, sometimes disturbing, and always unique. 

“The Junk Machine takes the possibilities of AI and turns them inward,” says ClownVamp. “A bright (pink!) robot that can infinitely generate AI-driven junk mail, I wanted to challenge the viewer to see both the power and peril of AI. It can create beauty, humor, and engaging new interactions, but it can also be industrialized, turned into a mechanism for proliferation–proliferation of past biases, of capitalist imagery, and visual noise. Perhaps our best chance of having AI become a force for good, is using it to question itself?” 

As marketing firms increasingly adopt generative AI tools, The Junk Machine confronts a crucial tension in the creative world: how technologies built for experimentation are being transformed into engines of mass production. A bright pink fever dream of 80s-inspired advertising, the work is at once playful and critical, inviting viewers to question what’s behind the machine and the content it produces. This showcase highlights how training on the visual past and plugging it into the technology of the future can lead to a flywheel from hell.