VALUABLE GESTURE FACTORY
Research process
Valuable Gesture Factory is a physical translation of the digital economy
hidden behind our screens, transforming users’ data into precious weaves.
Online users’ behavior such as clicking, liking and commenting,
This data is sold for advertising purposes by the companies who harvest it,
or used in order to train artificial intelligence and develop new services.
Users are most of the time unaware of the value they generate, for the only reason
that they cannot relate to this digital phenomena with their senses.
Any activity on the Instagram account of the factory provides
the raw material for the production line.
All the actions from users of the platform are harvested by an algorithm,
which generate the pattern for a punch card accordingly.
Factory workers transfer the digital footprint onto punch cards :
The ‘user patterns’ are processed by a jacquard loom -
analogue ancestor of computer programming - producing the weaving pattern.
The new textile containing clicks, likes and comments becomes the physical trace
of the of value generated with our data.
The more data we produce, the more luxurious and unique the weave.
The Algorithm of the Factory had been developed in collaboration with Luca Claessens.
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Valuable Gesture Factory loom exhibited at Kazerne Home of Design (NL) @kazerneehv - photo credits : Margot de Haas @margotgradina
valuable gesture installation Photo credits : femke Reijerman
Models : Coline Guérin - Dimitry Suzana - Sylke Van der Heiden - Noor Bootsma - Sandra Janssen.
