A World Within a Phrase - Results
A World Within a Phrase - Results
Discover all of the submissions for the art and music prompt challenge.
Hey friends,
I am absolutely thrilled to see so many artists participate with me in the art/music prompt challenge and excited to share them here. I honestly expected only three or four of my closest friends to submit work, considering many people are on vacation this time of year and the deadline was short. To my surprise, 20 artists showed up (including myself) and several submitted multiple works.
I’m also exciting to see such a diverse range of mediums and styles among the submissions—digital collage, digital painting, generative, AI-assisted, glitch, etc. While most are purely visual, there are a couple audio-visual pieces, as well as a couple music pieces.
The prompt, “They devour that by which they themselves wish to be devoured”, proved to be ambiguous enough to inspire a wide range of interpretations while evoking similar themes in many of the works. I’m curious to hear what you discover.
If you missed the challenge post, check it out here:
This challenge was born out of a small part of a larger personal project I’m working on. While using prompts like this in my work behind the scenes, I had the thought that it might be fun to see what my friends would come up with under the same restrictions: make an abstract visual and/or music piece based on a prompt with a one-week deadline. The results are captivating, thought-provoking, and inspiring.
Since the post is already lengthy, I’ll limit my commentary on each piece and primarily refer to the artists’ own words when applicable.
At the bottom of this post, I’ve written a timestamped breakdown of the conceptual elements of my composition. I hope you enjoy it.
Without further ado, let’s dive in🤘
Ryan Staley
‘vicarious’
Ryan’s physical/digital mixed-media collage work is instantly recognizable and often conveys powerful activist messages embedded within luscious textures and colors.
I’m seeing circular elements, a statement, and gorgeous textures evoking cellular division, all of which could be related to the prompt. Of course, there’s much more going on here and I highly recommend zooming in.
A couple qoutes by Ryan regarding the work:
constant overstimulation and burnout have turned people apathetic
but what we really need is for you to dig deeper and feel something”
“there’s some focus on the natural order that drives us all instinctually, and how the separation of body and mind will always lead to inner and outer turmoil”
Silvia Anan
‘Devoured By Love’
Silvia approaches both pieces with highly conceptual story-telling to capture the consuming nature of love and the religious ‘seven sins’ through gesture, color theory, and more.
In the artist’s words:
“Abstract figures in the image create the narrative. In the background on the right, a couple is deeply connected by an intense, passionate love, yet obscured within this passion, the female figure becomes twisted in the relationship. She is left behind as the man moves forward.
In the foreground, a male figure, with his back turned, appears to be escaping through a portal, distancing himself from the relationship. Beneath them, the curves symbolically represents the word ‘Devour,’ capturing the act of swallowing, embodies the consuming nature of their love.”
‘Devoured By Sin’
“This [previously drawn portrait] inspired me to think of the seven sins, and I had the urge to look up their color representations. I wanted to use all colors except red, which symbolizes wrath. I used the colors for greed, envy, and pride—yellow, green, and violet. It didn’t take long to create, but it gave me the look and feel I wanted to achieve with your prompt.
I wanted to approach it from a Jungian or even a Freudian angle, where whatever we consume excessively will eventually consume us. In fact, your quote has a reverse meaning: “They devour that by which they themselves wish to be devoured.” For example, falling madly in love with someone can lead to losing control of personal behaviors and ultimately losing the person because such excessive behavior can push anyone away. Addictions work the same way; we can lose our lives by becoming 100% dependent on the substance.
I wanted to use this prompt from a religious context to show the decay of a person consumed by greed, envy, and pride. However, for the title, I wanted to keep it short and simple.”
Pixel Symphony
[untitled]
Pixel Symphony submitted a plotted output (Rotring Isograph white ink plot on Bristol Paper) from the current state of an upcoming generative series that felt appropriate for the prompt. In his words, “think: lines forming solids or Icarus”—both ideas representing transformation as the prompt phrase suggests.
Considering that this challenge is part of a larger personal project of mine, I appreciate the submission of a work-in-progress from another artist’s current project.
w74.eth (Wojak)
‘Hindsight Bias’
Wojak, being the ambitious and prolific artist that he is, created three pieces in his distinctive digitally hand-drawn style that each tackle a different theme highlighting deceit and unforeseen consequences of decisions and behaviors in both individual and market contexts.
‘Fast Fashion Dumpster’
‘Liquidation Cascade’
In addition to the music on this one, there is a subtle grain motion visual effect.
“Repeated Long positions on flavor of the day narratives and repeated liquidations.
Lets chase the next high, maybe this time the tide will actually lift your boat and not capsize it.”
æther
‘A Demiurgic Perspective’
As I mentioned in a post, this is distinctly an æther piece in style and medium, as she communicates the prompt’s influence, from various angles, in both direct and indirect ways, creating a form of visual poetry.
Collect ‘A Demiurgic Perspective’
[untitled]
This is a second, unminted piece she created for the prompt that, I believe, works beautifully with the other one as a diptych. Notice the contrasting colors and the occurrence of the red dot in both.
Michael Hughes
[untitled]
Michael submitted an intense and fitting GIF piece. I can instantly see how the prompt is represented (or at least I think). There's a rotation back and forth of hot and cold colors, light and dark, and a sort of monstrous opening and closing gesture in the animation, as if to allude to eating/devouring.
“I am currently exploring creating glitch pieces using text, numbers, and letters as the first step, as the graphic elements for the pieces. Almost like a prompt, I guess, only different in that I literally created a composition in After Effects with the written text, which I then mill through my glitch development grinders.
After that, I literally play until I feel a piece is fitting the text, or simply visually pleasing. Or in the best case: both.”
Nicolas Lebrun
‘They devour’
Nicolas is a highly skilled generative artist with a keen eye for clean design. The piece shown here is only one iteration of nearly infinite possibilities that organizes the prompt text and symbols into grids.
In the artist’s words:
“The phrase ‘They devour that by which they themselves wish to be devoured.’ (by the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, Bubbles) is used with letter assemblages, to create rhythm and exhaustion, as if the text itself were being devoured.
I highly encourage you to try to algorithm for yourself by simply pressing the refresh button on the left side to see more of the outputs. I spent far too much time playing with this.
Luz Otxoa
‘Anfractuous’
Luz’s work, though written before the challenge, is actually very fitting and I’m happy they submitted it. The piece has an ambient, minimal texture overall, but with the addition of these close-up gestures in the beginning and end that give a bit of a Lynchian vibe. The form of the piece and the title both make a lot of sense in relation to the phonetics and grammar of the prompt phrase.
Jeremy Mathew
[untitled]
Jeremy is a new friend in the Substack space whom I’m happy to have met through his inquiry about this challenge. He creates great collage art, and although this piece isn’t purely abstract, it fully takes advantage of the prompt phrase. You get the sentiment of the prompt almost right on the nose, and then there is plenty of symbolism that causes you to explore and linger.
Check out Jeremy’s Substack:
Anuomii
‘Devoured by vibrations’
Anuomii’s piece is chaotic, and fittingly so, considering the title of the work. It feels like a visceral display of a canvas being completely taken over by every vibrational frequency at once. In the center, there is a cage-like structure and what appears to be an eye. I’m not sure whether to read into these as figurative elements or to accept them as abstact happenstance. Either way, I appreciate it as a focal point.
grotesq
‘relapses and remissions’
grotesq uses a combination of intuition and concept in their work. When asked how it was influenced by the prompt, the artist talks about how it comes from a feeling, “emotions and thoughts I cannot describe with words”. Thus is the intersection of abstract intuition and creative expression.
If I hadn’t spoken to the artist, my first observation would be the black and white, almost yin-yang, form that relates to the cyclical nature of the prompt.
Also from the artist:
“Visually, it is a body that decomposes and vice versa. The body parts that are visible are the head and the navel, the head refers to consciousness while the navel refers to birth.”
Collect ‘relapses and remissions’
‘Headless Love’
Another intuitive work with a suggestive title and the use of constrasting colors, red and blue, that transition from one to the other, suggesting the influence of the prompt.
The medium is “acrylics on paper, scanned and edited in digital”.
Luthfi Satya
‘Vanish’
Luthfi came out with an explosive piece that was recieved quite well by the audience. This is another artist with a strong voice, working in a crossover of physical and digital mediums, and recognizable from a mile away.
This may be the brightest and most colorful work I’ve seen from Luthfi. The piece is loud and chaotic, yet contained to an extent through the use of framing. Then you get these small, almost static, words and phrases that feel like whispers hovering over the noise. Zoom in to read the messages.
rapha
‘they wish to be’
Rapha took part of the prompt phrase and plugged it into AI to modify a generative output. The result is an original design and texture that captures both a generative and AI feel and is remiscent of light leaks in photography.
“The sentence first evoked recursion, or something like ouroboros, lol. I modified an old sketch to incorporate this idea, which gave a series of b&w outputs. I chose the one I thought worked best and used it in MJ (Midjourney) as a starting point, adding some of my usual mix of words and extra words from your prompt. As in my project “random access memories”, I used the words in your prompt as a range of possibilities rather than a whole sentence. “They wish to be” is what spoke to me, evoking something trying to cast itself into existence.”
Ira Greenberg
[untitled]
Ira took a unique approach, disregarding the sentiment of the prompt phrase and focusing on its recursive nature. He then employed his AI wizardry to create a piece that feels like a peek into the fabric of the universe.
“After thinking past literal consumption, the text suggested a fractalesque recursion so began exploring math/geometry space.”
theurbanita
‘allowed_to_return_again’
theurbanita made an energetic piece directly reflecting the suggested self-devouring, using what appears to be fingers being sucked into a black hole. The work was created with Adobe Firefly, then edited to get a pixelation effect.
Collect ‘allowed_to_return_again’
Supercities
‘Abyssal metanoia’
This piece uses AI to create clean symmetry, depicting what appears to be a castle in the midst of the universe. The circular and black-and-white elements show upfront influence from the prompt, while the title and subjects evoke the idea of profound transformation.
Blase
‘Being’
Blase created an impressive audio-visual work that makes gestures that feel intuitively inspired by the prompt as well as directly painting the sentiment with gestures closely resembling Ouroboros. The sound is ominous and I would call it ‘round’ in texture. It gives the feel that something almost otherworldly or larger than our understanding is happening.
“'Being' lies on top of an audio snippet made with VCV Rack”
Jeff Clark
‘Devour’
The piece shown here is only one beautiful iteration of 64 outputs from a generative collection on fx(hash). Take a minute to check it out and consider minting one for yourself.
Jeff approached the project from several viewpoints, all related to the circular nature of the prompt.
“The creative prompt made me think immediately of parasites, some of which get ingested in order to then devour their host from within. Applying conceptual simplification leads to the idea of self-parasitism where host and parasite are one and the same.
One visual metaphor for this is the Ouroboros - the serpent that eats its own tail. For this project I've tried to merge an abstract version of Ouroboros with the Japanese symbol of ensō. In Zen Buddhism, ensō represents the circle of enlightenment, the void, and the infinite nature of existence. It is often depicted as an incomplete circle, symbolizing the idea that imperfection is an essential part of existence and perfection. Drawing ensō is a practice of spiritual reflection, self-expression, and mindfulness. It often reflects the state of the artist's mind at the moment of creation.
Some compositions also show nested symbols of alternating colors. This, together with the broken circle which suggests a mouth, illustrates the phrase in another manner.”
DouglasBubbleBot
‘Artletters’
DBB was incredibly thoughtful, as usual, in his approach and composed this work entirely from texts from my previous Artletter posts. There’s a lot to read into this and it feels like some kind full-circle moment, considering that the prompt challenge originated from the Artletter. In addition to the overlapping text, we get the large circular gesture to enforce the idea.
I’ll continue picking this one apart as deeply as I can.
LoneWick
‘…they devour that by which they themselves wish to be devoured…’
My submission takes influence from the prompt in several dimensions. Some of which lean more literal and others more esoteric. I’ll start at the highest level, then break it down.
The overall form is in three sections:
The first section (0:00) is the shortest, introducing the piece with an energetic repeating motive that gradually breaks down (casually devoured) into the next section.
The second section (0:16) introduces a motive in the lower voice that returns periodically throughout this section, gradually changing as it seems to ‘forget’ itself after the initial consumption.
The third section (2:05) sees a return of the character heard in the first section, but in a much larger and more intense manifestation.
Let’s break it down further:
0:00 - The first section represents a ‘bite-sized’, seemingly innocent, symbol of a larger idea being consumed. The high-energy character represents the magnitude of the element being devoured. The somewhat static quality of this figure represents the unforgiving, relentless, nature of the thing being consumed.
You hear the figure breakdown gracefully as it is complacently consumed by the next section. This is not only represented by the voicing and rhythmic characteristics, but also by a change in ‘key’ or tonal center.
0:16 - This is where the main motive, or subject, of the piece comes into full view. It’s the lower voice that you’ll hear repeated a few times, periodically returning throughout this section in slightly different ways.
The nonchalant character of this main figure represents the casualness and complacency with which one ‘consumes’ [beliefs, sugar, love, diagnoses, product]. The rhythm of the first three notes of the phrase are taken from the syllabic rhythm of ‘they de-vou-er’. This is the seed from which the phrasing in all voices throughout this section are born, giving the piece organicism and cohesiveness.
0:45 - You’ll hear the main figure give way to these types of longer sustained harmonies. These are, at once, the idea of the main figure being hit with another dose of the product and the higher-level tragic sentiment of its occurrence.
1:15 - The main figure begins to forget itself.
1:35 - Two things are happening here. The upper, ascending, harmonies over the main figure re-introduce the ‘key’ of the first section, a poly-’tonal’ event signifying that the consumed product is now taking over and feasting upon the consumer. You’ll notice the main figure beginning to fully lose its identity.
1:55 - As the consumption progresses, you start to hear little motives in the highest notes from the first section as it takes over, not only in ‘key’ but also in gesture.
2:05 - This is the beginning of section three. The consumer is now completely enveloped in a grand irony, with the only recognizable element being the mocking of the first three notes of the main bass motif. From here, a more dramatic and relentless performance of the ‘bite-sized’ character, which was gracefully consumed at the beginning, ensues—powerful and unforgiving.
3:15 - A ghostly remembrance of the main figure, set in the high voice to give the effect of a memory.
Thank you
If you’ve made it this far, I want to thank you for taking the time to experience the wide range of art created for this challenge. It proved to be a lot of fun for the artists, as well as myself. A few artists mentioned they would like to see another challenge again soon, so that just might happen.
If you enjoyed this and would like to see more art and music stuff, subscribe for free.
-LW❤️🔥
These submissions are so fun! So interesting to see how many different interpretations can come out of a single phrase.
It’s great to see your first challenge be so successful! There are so many unique interpretations—some playfully, others seriously, and some with a touch of dichotomy. I love how everyone created a world within a phrase as each interpretation offers us a glimpse into the artist's inner world, their soul, and psyche.