The official votes are tallied, and a winner has been determined in the Iowahawk Endowment for the Arts $33.18 Steel Cage Art Death Match. Before the official bestowing, let me first say thank you to all who participated. I was pleasantly astonished by all the awesome artwork. There were some superb entries that came in after the deadline which will be featured in an upcoming post.
I would also like to give out special recognition to two entries that I thought went above and beyond the call of a stupid blog art contest. These are the entries that best reflected my own aesthetic tastes, and the ones I personally voted for. First, the Margaret Keane/ Gig parody "Pity President" by Stoaty from S. Weasel:
The second is this deft reference to the classic monster t shirts of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, submitted by John Manders.
To Stoaty and John I am awarding the Imaginary Certificate of Special Artistic Merit, along with the Jack H. Squat Memorial Monetary Stipend. Because many enter the $33.18 Steel Cage Art Octagon ... but only one leaves with the dough.
About that Election Fraud Business
As I noted in earlier posts and updates, many entrants were caught up in the electoral spirit of Chicago, employing all manner of exuberant ballot box shenanigans. I highly support this, as it allowed me to charge exorbitant advertising rates to the clove cigarette and therapy center industries. And, when you think about it, isn't ballot fraud a type of performance art in itself?
But, after an unfamiliar pique of conscience, I decided it was best that I weed out the fake votes. I wanted to show my kid that when it came to getting that $33.18 I found in his sock drawer, cheaters would not win. But how to identify votes that were potentially fake or generated by a program? My rule was to eliminate all duplicate ballots. For instance, if there were 5,000 ballots voting only for contestant X, they all counted as a single ballot. If there were 50,000 voting only Y and Z, another single ballot. With 87 total entries, and voters allowed to pick as many as they wanted, there were 2^87 = approximately 128 trillion trillion unique ways to vote; my rule was aimed at finding entries that showed up on as many different unique ballots as possible.
There were nearly 85,000 ballots cast in the voting but only 614 were unique. One clear favorite emerged, appearing on 206 unique ballots, more than twice as many as the runner up.
And the Winner Is...
"Racist Pixel" (2009) by US Citizen from Traction Control. Photon on Jpeg.
This color field homage to Mark Rothko delighted voters with its bold composition and trenchant brushstrokes. Congratulation to US Citizen for your historic victory, and I will be contacting you directly with instructions on claiming your prize.
