DA 2: Project 3

100 Dollar Glitch

1 Dollar Glitch

Burn the Money

Artist Statement:

Burn the Money was created through projection mapping, sculpting, data bending, GIF animations, acrylic, and artificial intelligence. I started by finding images of United States bills on Google, and then I took the photo and exported it as a TIFF file. I would then import the image into Audacity, where I used data bending to manipulate the raw data. I would then export the image to Photoshop to create a GIF. I completed this process a few times until I got the GIFs I wanted. Next, I printed out oversized bills and burned the edges with a lighter. I used Google Gemini to create a fake senate bill that discussed fiscal year spending plans and burned the edges of those two papers as well. I assembled the paper bills and spending bills in a way to make it look more abstract, like it was falling down the wall. I then found GIFs of fire and projected them onto three of my six bills; the other three bills had my glitched GIF animation. Below the bills was a paper flamethrower with the words "TAX DOLLARS" written on it, with a projected flame coming out, trailing up the wall to the paper bills.

For my sculpture, I took an old plastic pumpkin that had the top chopped off and painted white and red acrylic paint throughout the work. I then took a large paintbrush and screwed it vertically into the inside edge of the pumpkin. I used hot glue to attach a plastic jug to the top of the brush. I accidentally dropped a roll of wax paper while cooking, so I repurposed the part that rolled across the floor and wrapped it around the brush, inside the water jug, and around the pumpkin. I then used glow sticks to illuminate the inside of the water jug, which I also painted white acrylic over, and down the brush where the wax paper was wrapped around, and finally in the inside of the pumpkin. I then projected animations onto the pumpkin, the wax paper, and the jug itself. Finally, I used a standard 2' by 3' American flag, where I projected a GIF of burning money onto the flag.

The overarching theme of my composition entails that government spending is often out of control. Each political party slips absurd spending plans masked into multi-page bills where the senate butt heads with each other and causes silly government shutdowns, like the one we saw that lasted 34 days this year, 2025. This shutdown even effected my education to where I couldn't even reach out to my VA department for help with school conflicts.