A particular understanding of empowerment lies at the root of research into robotics and artificial intelligence. Freedom can, apparently, be engineered. Our cities, our houses, our surfaces are integrating automation so that we may purportedly become more autonomous. The all-encompassing digitization of everyday life currently underway still carries the holistic, just, and humanistic promise of a previous generation, yet the tendencies of its contemporary manifestations increasingly cast doubt on its fulfillment. Automated technologies have been deployed throughout the social and economic sphere since the dawn of modernity, obscuring a common emancipatory horizon by means of a double bind: by giving and taking, liberating and ensnaring, alleviating and obliging. Technological development has an inherently uncertain future, which places focus on the agents and mechanisms of its progress. Opportunity is not destiny, and history, as we know, can go any which way.

Machines have, we should not forget, long been a figure of the human, an analogue through which we can reflexively learn what it means to be human. Yet contemporary technology seems to have abandoned an ocular ethos of indexical referentiality in favor of a prismatic attitude of uncanny exuberance, challenging inherited epistemic foundations of knowledge, truth, certainty, value, and belief. The portraits being algorithmically manufactured today feel more real not because we give more to work with, but because more can be taken without our notice. Yet if we look beyond the self-image projected onto our retinas and focus our eyes on the surface of technology, what we can see is, at least upon first glance, a picture of the human at work. With the progressive advance of automation into dimensions of life previously unthought, relieving us of duties never before conceived of as such, technology has begun to map out and define the conceptual terrain of labor. We are the frontier. Have we not always been though?

Artificial Labor is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and MAK Wien within the context of the VIENNA BIENNALE 2017 and its theme, “Robots. Work. Our Future.”

View Grid
View List
12 essays
Robotics has an anthropomorphic obsession. We build robots in the image of ourselves, but think of them more as objects that manipulate other objects….
There are two main methods to build the concrete core of a tower. The more usual one consists of building one floor at a time with formwork that is la…
There has been an excess of modesty in the feminist agendas of recent decades. Carol A. Stabile is amongst those who have been critical of an absence …
Simone C Niquille
Fitter, happier More productive Comfortable Not drinking too much Regular exercise at the gym, three days a week Getting on better with your as…
Julia Powles
In the Italian mid-south, on a spur east of Naples and Mount Vesuvius, there is a small rustic village, Calvanico, ringed by the spectacular Picentini…
Intensive incompatibility marks our moment. The multiple crises we face, socially, economically, and ecologically (which are impossible to disentangle…
Harald Gruendl
Germany. A town with an industrial park. A medium-sized factory. Heavy rain drumming on the roof for days. Inside, a muffled patter. Markings on the f…
Andreas Rumpfhuber
The provocation of automation, by whatever technologic means, is not an interface design question. It is not about our experience, or how friendly, hu…
It’s a doubtful thing to be in the cultural sway of Venice, especially when you are Montenegrin, like us and our robots. In their 85th Biennale (th…
Science cannot get a decent break these days. Scientists around the world have even taken the unusual step of organizing a “March for Science” (on Apr…
Bruce Wexler
For thousands of years, change and its associated discomforts have been a central feature of human societies and trans-generational struggle. Hubel an…
Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch, Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Anton Vidokle, and Marlies Wirth
Artificial Labor is a new collaborative project between MAK Wien and e-flux Architecture within the context of the VIENNA BIENNALE 2017 and its theme,…
Category
Labor & Work, Technology
Subject
Artificial intelligence, Robotics, Automation

Artificial Labor is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and MAK Wien within the context of the VIENNA BIENNALE 2017 and its theme, “Robots. Work. Our Future.”

Contributors
Subscribe

e-flux announcements are emailed press releases for art exhibitions from all over the world.

Agenda delivers news from galleries, art spaces, and publications, while Criticism publishes reviews of exhibitions and books.

Architecture announcements cover current architecture and design projects, symposia, exhibitions, and publications from all over the world.

Film announcements are newsletters about screenings, film festivals, and exhibitions of moving image.

Education announces academic employment opportunities, calls for applications, symposia, publications, exhibitions, and educational programs.

Sign up to receive information about events organized by e-flux at e-flux Screening Room, Bar Laika, or elsewhere.

I have read e-flux’s privacy policy and agree that e-flux may send me announcements to the email address entered above and that my data will be processed for this purpose in accordance with e-flux’s privacy policy*

Thank you for your interest in e-flux. Check your inbox to confirm your subscription.