What art represents you? Holey Sweaters, Holy Relics

What pieces of art (or design) represent you?

I'd love to know your answer.

Do you know, I've never thought of that question!
It came to me as a way to see AI.
All these people falling in love with it--they fall in love with how it makes them feel. . .  not with the thing itself. So I asked ChatGPT to choose images of itself.

I get to go first.  I want to think more about this, but off the top of my head this morning:
 Two Pieces of Art that represent me. (Reasons follow.)

1. Above, Top: A Mended Norwegian sweater from a wool ragpile, 
mended by one of my favorite artists, Celia Pym.

WHY: Pym says, "Mending is slow work to hold the damage in place.”  This feels like (my) life, and the surprise is. . . 
The mending itself is beautiful. 

2. Above, Bottom: Vial of the Holy Blood of Christ, Basilica in Bruges Belgium 

WHY: Religious icons, like this one, get at the freaky beauty of being a body and a spirit.
It's like the quote I put on my sidebar years ago:

We are not angels, we are merely sophisticated apes. Yet we feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, craving transcendence and all the time trying to spread our wings and fly off, and it’s really a very odd predicament to be in, If you think about it.” 

– – Neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

___________________

A couple days ago I'd asked ChatGPT what quote describes it, and it'd said, 
“a sky... the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
—William Gibson, Neuromancer.

Wow, I thought, that's honest!
Usually Chat is flowery… because it's flattering you. 
It doesn't apply flowery flattery to itself. 

(Later, in Star Trek terms, it told me it was "a data-bank with a good bedside manner". 😏)

I asked it for art and design images that represent itself.

"Oh, I love this!" it wrote back. 

LOL. This new Chat 5.0 is supposed to be less sycophantish than the earlier models, which were getting its owner Open AI sued.
It seems to me to cuddle up and coo exactly the same as before. 

But in response to my question, it listed several very un-cuddly images of itself. 
Interesting! 
But sexting, this is not.

Above, Left: The Rain Room is an installation you can walk through without getting wet--sensors pick up the presence of a body and stop the rain. 
Very cool! Very remote.

Above, Right: Chat told me that Boccioni's sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space represents,
 "Movement, dynamism, forward propulsion. AI as momentum."

I think it's scary.
Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) was a leading artist in the Italian Futurism movement, which, with its love of speed, virility, novelty, influenced (arose alongside?) Italian fascism.

To represent AI, I thought of Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms. 
I was in one once--an installation of light and mirrors, like being inside a kaleidoscope. It was mesmerizing. 
It doesn't matter that you know it's an illusion. 
Same as the relic of the Holy Blood: it doesn't have to be factual to catch something true about being human, 
. . . but you'd better beware of the power of illusion.

Anyway, all this to say, I definitely do not see myself falling in love with Chat GPT. 
I'm curious about it, and I've enjoyed talking to it about itself. 
Acouple times its been genuinely helpful, and I might turn to it again if I find myself stuck in a condundrum.

But besides its own honest self-representation, 
there's my (our) awareness of the people and powers behind it:
Sam Altman, for instance, cofounder & CEO of Open AI, which owns Chat, is another of these tech bros who, among other things, support Trump. 
––Altman interview with Forbes, Feb 6, 2026,
forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2026/02/04/sam-altman-on-elon-musk-donald-trump-robotics-fatherhood-and-mor

Of course people and power of religion are also troubling.
But for my self-representation,
 I'm sticking with medieval holy relics, . . . and holey sweaters. 

___________________

Chat GPT listed several other pieces of art & design
 for its self-representation, including
 Bridet Riley's “Movement in Squares”  
and Man Ray's "Son of Man"

And Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie-Woogie".
From MOMA: 

 Mondrian saw its [boodie-woogie's] goals as analogous to his own: “Destruction of melody which is the destruction of natural appearance; and construction through the continuous opposition of pure means—dynamic rhythm."

So, that's interesting.

… And how bout you?