[pkscout]

Thanks for looking into this! I did see the Cache wiki page. Also did a lot of google searching, and it does look there is no easy way to disable caching. Kodi core is compiled, correct? I do see some string relevant to caching inside the kodi binary.

Do you know at what point inside your Python script the following Kodi LOG message are generated?

2020-01-09 20:14:45.100 T:140325565753088   DEBUG: [Artist Slideshow] ArtistSlideshow.Image set to /home/syam/KODI/CD-2019.04.28__MG_3534.jpg
2020-01-09 20:14:45.273 T:140326167779072   DEBUG: Caching image '/home/syam/KODI/CD-2019.04.28__MG_3534.jpg' to '3/3985c122.jpg':
2020-01-09 20:14:45.373 T:140326167779072   DEBUG: cached image 'special://masterprofile/Thumbnails/3/3985c122.jpg' size 1080x720
2020-01-09 20:14:46.101 T:140326030870272   DEBUG: [Artist Slideshow] same file playing, using cached artists_info
2020-01-09 20:14:50.101 T:140325565753088   DEBUG: Previous line repeats 3 times.

In particular, the second line. Perhaps I can trick Kodi into not generating the cached version of the image.

That ArtistSlideshow.Image message comes right after AS selects one of the random images and then tells the skin that's the image to display.  In the code that is in the Slideshow object within the run() method.  That starts at line 157 of artistslideshow.py.  I'd give you an exact line number, for the image set, but it's changing with the next beta.  Look for this line:

python:
self._set_property( 'ArtistSlideshow.Image', image )

I don't think there's going to be any way from within Python to get Kodi to not cache that image, but that's the line that sets the skin property so the skin can display the image.