General Intellect

General Intellect is a generative database of thousands of videos produced by Amazon Mechanical Turk workers. James Coupe paid the workers to upload one-minute videos every hour between 9am and 5pm, documenting a standard working day. They were also asked to add captions. The artist then combined the moving images into a database that could be broken down by demographics or by topic. The individuals were free to address the request as they pleased. The result is a portrait of an online labor force designed to act as anonymous machines but behaving in silly, bizarre, boring, unpredictable and irrational ways. Just like the internet. And just like the human beings who use it or are used by it.

The multi-channel video installation was originally exhibited in an abandoned school building about to be demolished to make space for luxury apartments and offices for the “other" Amazon workers, the ones who get to enjoy health insurance, free bananas and brainstorming afternoons on rooftop gardens.

shortlist net based 2017