Audconk is for use with conky, audacious, and audacious-plugins (specifically, the song-change plugin). It provides the album artwork to conky for display on your desktop.
It assumes your artwork is a single .jpg file stored in the album folder of your music library named folder.jpg, as in: "/radiohead/ok_computer/folder.jpg."
The program generates files in the ~/.local/share/audconk directory, which conky uses to display the contents. Here is a list of files this program produces and places in that directory:
folder.jpg (artwork image) currartsize.txt (size in bytes of artwork)
If you use a different 'standard name' for your cover art, you will have to change the name, otherwise recompile the program, which is in unicode.
Once installed, you will need to first create a directory, (1) mkdir ~/.local/share/audconk, then (2) enable the Song Change plugin, in Audacious. Under the plugin's first command field: "Command to run when starting a new song:", enter the path and command for this program. You can then use the sample .conkyrc to modify conky to display the result. Note, a track must be started to activate this program and therefore provide the files to conky. There is a sample (not usable without tailoring) bash script in the tools folder. The example shows some steps for processing other tag info.
There are also sample .conkyrc lines you can tailor for your conky install and the audtool utility (for audacious-qt5) so tag information and artwork can be diplayed in conky:
${exec audtool --current-song-tuple-data artist | fold -s -w 62} - ${color Grey}${font Terminus:size=8}
${exec audtool --current-song-tuple-data album | fold -s -w 62}
(${exec audtool --current-song-tuple-data year})
${font Terminus:size=8:bold}${color 0077ff}${exec audtool --current-song-tuple-data title | fold -s -w 62}
${color Grey}${font Terminus:size=8}Time: ${exec audtool --current-song-output-length}/${exec audtool --current-song-length}
Bitrate:${exec audtool --current-song-bitrate-kbps} Rating code:${exec cat ~/.local/share/audconk/currgpnum.txt}
Art Size:${exec cat ~/.local/share/audconk/currartsize.txt}
${color Grey}${font Terminus:size=7}${exec audtool --current-song-tuple-data comment | fold -s -w 69 | head -n 8}
${image ~/.local/share/audconk/folder.jpg -p 0,388 -s 250x250 -n -f1}
See Conky sample script (sample .conkyrc file) in docs folder for full example. (Includes other script data, and you will need to adapt coordinates for your arrangement. The sample was written for a dual monitor setup. It will likely not work for you 'as is'.)