POST BY PADDY JOHNSON
Aaron Koblin, The Sheep Market is a collection of 10,000 sheep made by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Workers were paid 0.02 ($USD) to “draw a sheep facing to the left.” Animations of each sheep’s creation may be viewed at TheSheepMarket.com
Art-Tech weekend here I come! Rhizome’s Seven on Seven takes place this weekend, which means ticket holders get to see what seven artists and their heavy hitting tech collaborators come up with. As expressed in earlier AFC comment threads, given the one-day time limitation, there’s a good chance the projects won’t yield particularly awesome results. Still, with fourteen participants I’m guessing at least one piece will make the event worth while. Whatever the results, you’ll be hearing from me. After the fact. The New Museum’s theater is in the basement so live tweeting the event isn’t going to happen.
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I don’t really understand the fascination of artists with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Well, I do, it’s a weird socioeconomic phenomenon, but the tone is never clear. Besides these sheep we’ve had Moby Dick letters and pieces of dollar bills redrawn by the cyber-serfs out in Amazonland. The fact of a population that is so broke and/or has so much time to do these distributable repetitive tasks for pennies is, if not depressing, symptomatic of a world with too vast an income gap. How does that not taint all the art made with it?
I don’t really understand the fascination of artists with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Well, I do, it’s a weird socioeconomic phenomenon, but the tone is never clear. Besides these sheep we’ve had Moby Dick letters and pieces of dollar bills redrawn by the cyber-serfs out in Amazonland. The fact of a population that is so broke and/or has so much time to do these distributable repetitive tasks for pennies is, if not depressing, symptomatic of a world with too vast an income gap. How does that not taint all the art made with it?
I assume that taint is supposed to be part of the work but there’s pretty clear limitations to this art.
I assume that taint is supposed to be part of the work but there’s pretty clear limitations to this art.
That’s the whole point of the sheep. nnThe Johnny Cash Project is a good counter point I think.
That’s the whole point of the sheep. \n\nThe Johnny Cash Project is a good counter point I think.
“That’s the whole point of the sheep,” what, that Mechanical Turk is bad? Wouldn’t it be better to just not use it? I’m vaguely remembering an Anthony Gormley installation where Mexican artisans were hired to make thousands of hollow-eyed ceramic creatures that filled a museum room. My guess was they didn’t get $25 an hour. The “it’s OK to exploit labor from a developing country if you’re an artist” theme that you see in so much “first world” work is troubling. If you want to be socially useful you could do something like Jamie Oliver’s healthy lunch initiative in Appalachia.
“That’s the whole point of the sheep,” what, that Mechanical Turk is bad? Wouldn’t it be better to just not use it? I’m vaguely remembering an Anthony Gormley installation where Mexican artisans were hired to make thousands of hollow-eyed ceramic creatures that filled a museum room. My guess was they didn’t get $25 an hour. The “it’s OK to exploit labor from a developing country if you’re an artist” theme that you see in so much “first world” work is troubling. If you want to be socially useful you could do something like Jamie Oliver’s healthy lunch initiative in Appalachia.
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