Pranksters - The Art of the Prank

December 19, 2025

Art That Mocks You

Fart art. Words don’t do it justice. The video in the article explains it…

“Wake Up, Beeple!,” by Valentina Di Liscia, Hyperallergic, December 4, 2025.

Crypto-backed artworks at Art Basel Miami Beach advance the wealth mechanisms they claim to subvert and make you, the viewer, a participant in the ploy.

A monstrous specimen of art as social commentary takes form when the work in question replicates the mechanisms the artist boasts about subverting, and at Art Basel Miami Beach, in a new section titled Zero 10 backed by the crypto marketplace OpenSea, Jack Butcher’s “Self Checkout” (2025) is its most shameless manifestation.

The installation consists of a checkout counter powered by Stripe terminals that beckon visitors to tap their cards and pay any amount, receiving a printed receipt whose length is proportional to their payment and comes with an “NFT companion.” A ticker above the counter tracks the lucre from an initial value of -$75,000, Butcher’s stated investment in the piece. Read the whole article here.

December 19, 2025

Ethical Vacancy

What happens when AI’s lack of conscience converges with people with no conscience?

“The ‘AI Homeless Man Prank’ reveals a crisis in AI education,” by External Contributor, Digital Information World, December 14, 2025.

The new TikTok trend “AI Homeless Man Prank” has sparked a wave of outrage and police responses in the United States and beyond.

The prank involves using AI image generators to create realistic photos depicting fake homeless people appearing to be at someone’s door or inside their home. Learning to distinguish between truth and falsehood is not the only challenge society faces in the AI era. We must also reflect on the human consequences of what we create.

As professors of educational technology at Laval University and education and innovation at Concordia University, we study how to strengthen human agency — the ability to consciously understand, question and transform environments shaped by artificial intelligence and synthetic media — to counter disinformation. Read the whole article here.

December 12, 2025

Social Media Compliance Certificates Available Now!

Traveling into or out of the United States (and want to be able to travel without the fear of deportation)? Show the authorities that your online activity from the past five years has been pre-screened and approved.

Print your customizable Social Media Compliance Certificate, by artist Joey Skaggs, and keep it with your passport and other important travel documents.

https://joeyskaggs.com/works/social-media-compliance-certificate/.

December 12, 2025

Guerrilla of My Dreams

It’s about time…

“Learn ‘How to Be a Guerrilla Girl’ at The Getty,” by Beverly Press, November 26, 2025.

Coinciding with the Guerrilla Girls’ 40th anniversary, “How to Be a Guerrilla Girl,” on view at the Getty through April 12, 2026, offers a rare, behind-the-scenes look into the inner workings of the iconic feminist art collective.

Drawing from the Getty Research Institute’s remarkable Guerrilla Girls archive, the exhibition highlights the strategies – anonymity, data gathering, protest actions, culture jamming and grassroots distribution – that have defined the group’s groundbreaking practice since the mid-1980s.

The Guerrilla Girls have created a newly-commissioned work for the exhibition that explores the Getty’s own collection of European painting and sculpture. Using comic strip style speech bubbles, they reimagine the voices of women represented in these artworks through a twenty-first century lens. The commission exposes deeply rooted biases in the representation of women in Guerilla Girls characteristic witty style. Read the whole article here.

November 25, 2025December 12, 2025

Santa Claus is coming to town!

You better watch out…

“‘Most hated event on the planet’: New movie shows the rise of San Francisco’s SantaCon,” by Dan Gentile, SFGATE, October 31, 2025.

The trailer just dropped for ‘SANTACON,’ which premieres at the DOC NYC film festival on Nov. 13.

There are few San Francisco events as divisive as SantaCon. The yearly, debauchery-filled bar crawl features hundreds, if not thousands, of costumed Santas rampaging through cities across the country, leaving a trail of inebriated chaos in their wake. But it wasn’t always this way.

A new film is set to premiere on Nov. 13 at the DOC NYC film festival and is simply titled “SANTACON,” directed by Seth Porges, whose previous work includes “Class Action Park” and “How to Rob A Bank.” The first trailer, released on Friday, begins with footage of violent Santas and also shows Jimmy Fallon mentioning the New York Police Department’s understanding of the event as “the nightmare before Christmas.” Local news anchors declare that locals want the event to be canceled, and text appears on the screen proclaiming SantaCon the “most hated event on the planet.” Read the whole article here.