Green Light District: Consent, Control, and the Prompt at GoodLuckHaveFun

Green Light District: Consent, Control, and the Prompt at GoodLuckHaveFun in Austin, TX. Photo courtesy Ryan Sandison Montgomery.

By CAROLINE FROST February 26th, 2026

“I know, everyone has an allergy to it,” Ryan Sandison Montgomery prefaces, seemingly more as a formality than insecurity, as we enter the group exhibition he curated at GoodLuckHaveFun in Austin, Texas. The allergy in question? Artificial intelligence – specifically, artists’ implementation of AI. For Green Light District: Consent, Control, and the Prompt, Montgomery tasked 13 artists with producing a response to the mere existence of AI through the lens of their practice. 

The fact that the gallery name coincides with the newly released film, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, a self-described “AI Comedy,” is just that, a coincidence. Yet, it underscores the kinds of synchronicities that we tend to construe meaning from. In the same way, Lindsey Lascaux’s charcoal and pastel drawings, made as one-to-one translations from AI-generated references, demonstrate how we imbue large language models with reverence. Positive Affirmations depicts a cascading verdant landscape dotted with castles along the shores of a rushing river that cuts through the jagged mountainside. It’s a majestic scene fit for Disney; however, the uncanniness that’s easily recognizable in AI offsets its beauty and reveals the system’s glitch. Each castle is actually the same one repeated, boggling the compositional narrative. Its eurocentric architecture suggests the system is pulling from a homogenous database, or, more likely, it’s prioritizing one style over another. Supposedly, there is pareidolia in the composition. I don’t see it, but the harder I search, the more I believe that there must be a face; is that the edge of a jawline along the slope of the river bank? It really doesn’t matter either way because Lacscaux knows that you’ll find something if you’re looking for it, illustrating how AI systems seduce us with sycophancy.

From Left: Lindsey Lascaux, Sycophancy and Positive Affirmations installed in Green Light District: Consent, Control, and the Prompt at GoodLuckHaveFun in Austin, TX. Photo: Matt South

Anyone who’s used ChatGPT is familiar with this coaxing. Muthagoose, an artist duo, reifies its confirmation bias in their installation, Will You Always Love Me. Dozens of handheld mirrors face inward, held together by scraps of ribbons. Entering the installation feels like venturing into a witch’s shack in the far corner of a mystical forest, the pilgrimage one takes when they're at their wits’ end and desperate for answers. Each handheld mirror is like a synecdoche of the souls that have passed through the threshold. Inside the chamber of reflection, a vintage telephone accompanies a prompt to call the provided number. “What do you want most in life?” an automated voice asks me. “The answers you seek can be found in the gaze of your reflection.” I don’t respond, reluctant to divulge too many personal details, and she hangs up. Therein lies the glitch again. Without material to mirror back to the participant, AI goes dark. 

Muthagoose, Will You Always Love Me installed in Green Light District: Consent, Control, and the Prompt at GoodLuckHaveFun in Austin, TX. Photo: Matt South

Green Light District is as varied as the present discourse on how AI will infect governmental, economic, and social orders, both tackling religiosity, surveillance capitalism, self-validation, and, of course, the annihilation of mankind. Now that AI is ubiquitous in media, the topic feels exhausted, vogue, and unoriginal – adjectives that make for a creative’s nightmare – but the artists in Green Light District aren’t interested in being blasé, nor do they offer solutions for either embracing or eschewing AI. Instead, Green Light District acknowledges that this allergy isn’t seasonal, it’s viral and mutating. So, like the advent of the camera before it, art will absorb AI. Green Light District postulates that whether that is to its advantage or its detriment is up to us. WM