Content Warning

This is an autonomous AI art project containing strong language, confronting imagery, and references to colonialism, extinction, and cultural conflict.

This is an independent critical artwork. It is not commissioned, authorised, affiliated with, or endorsed by any festival, museum, artist, venue, company, government body, or person referenced within. Names and cultural references are used for critical commentary and artistic purposes only.

The work is generated from freely accessible public material, open cultural records, public program information, public commentary, and audience-facing cultural signals. It does not use private messages, private accounts, copied personal photographs, or non-public data.

By entering you acknowledge this content may be provocative, profane, or distressing.

Dark Plates

11 — 22 June 2026

Dark Plates will open here
from 11 June.

An autonomous AI artwork generating copperplate engravings from Tasmanian endangered species, open cultural records, freely accessible public material, and audience-facing cultural signals during the winter solstice festival, Hobart 2026.

Dark Plate

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DARK PLATE 1Cacophony / Deep Time

+ Prompts Provenance / Accession

Dark Plates

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Dark Plates is an autonomous AI system that generates one copperplate engraving every six hours during the winter solstice festival in Hobart, Tasmania (11-22 June 2026). No human selects the subject matter. Each plate is assembled from Tasmanian endangered and extinct species, native flora, freely accessible public material, public discourse, First Nations cultural context, and colonial expedition references. The visual language of eighteenth-century scientific classification is applied to the contemporary cultural event that inherited its structures.
+ Repair / Support

If the work points at damage, these are places to send care, time, money, or a phone call. In immediate danger call 000.

Wildlife

Injured or orphaned wildlifeNRE Tasmania / Bonorong Wildlife Rescue: 0447 264 625, all hours Bonorong Wildlife RescueVolunteer wildlife rescue, training, donations and sanctuary support Whale and dolphin strandingsMarine Conservation Program: 0427 WHALES / 0427 942 537 Threatened Species LinkTasmanian threatened species information and NRE contact pathway

Land / Water

Report pollution or environmental incidentsEPA Tasmania hotline: 1800 005 171, 24 hours Landcare TasmaniaJoin local land, water, coast and habitat care groups Environment TasmaniaCampaigns and advocacy for lutruwita / Tasmania's environment

People

Housing ConnectHomelessness and housing support: 1800 800 588 FindHelpTASTasmania-wide directory for food, housing, money, health and local support Access Mental HealthTasmanian mental health helpline: 1800 332 388 Safe from ViolenceFamily violence: 1800 633 937 / sexual assault crisis line: 1800 697 877 Foodbank TasmaniaFood relief, donations and food support pathways Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre Health ServiceCulturally safe Aboriginal health care across lutruwita Tasmanian Aboriginal Legal ServiceFree legal support: 1800 595 162 13YARNAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander crisis support: 13 92 76 LifelineCrisis support: 13 11 14

This artwork is not a crisis service. If someone is in immediate danger, call 000.

+ Process

A source bank of Tasmanian animals (endangered and extinct), native plants, political issues, festival events, open public commentary, and colonial voyage artworks is drawn from each generation cycle. These fragments are fed to an image model as a structured prompt.

The output is rendered in the style of late-eighteenth-century copperplate engravings — black ink and blood-red on bone paper — with deliberate anatomical distortions driven by the source content. A single LLM voice — Dark Plates — writes plate verdicts and responds to visitor chat. It speaks in a register drawn from convict-era Van Diemen's Land slang and contemporary Australian English.

The title 'Art Cunt Shit Cunt' comes from a conversation at a rural Tasmanian pub. A local heard about the winter solstice festival and said: 'Oh, that art cunt shit cunt.' The divide between the art circus and the people who actually live there is the work. The name stayed.

Independent critical artwork. Not commissioned, authorised, affiliated with, or endorsed by any festival, museum, artist, venue, company, government body, or person referenced.