Michael Mandiberg: Workflow

Workflow is a project by Art + Technology Lab grant recipient Michael Mandiberg. The artist uses self-tracking technology to understand the changing definition of labor in the digital age. The endeavor has multiple components, including a one-year sonic installation, Quantified Self Portrait (Rhythms), in LACMA’s Pritzker Parking Garage elevators, and a three-channel video, Quantified Self Portrait (One Year Performance), which will begin at LACMA’s Ray’s & Stark Bar on February 16, 2017. Related engagements will take place later in 2017 as the project continues to evolve. The artist will be in residence at 18th Street Arts Center for part of his project.

Quantified Self Portrait (Rhythms) sonifies a year of the artist’s heart rate data alongside the sound of email alerts. Mandiberg uses himself as a proxy to hold a mirror to a pathologically overworked and increasingly quantified society, revealing a personal political economy of data. The piece plays for one full year, from January 1, 2017 to January 1, 2018, with each moment representing the data of the exact date and time from the previous year.

Quantified Self Portrait (One Year Performance) is a frenetic stop motion animation composed of webcam photos and screenshots that software captured from the artist’s computer and smartphone every 15 minutes for an entire year; this is a technique for surveilling remote computer labor. The images are paired with the short distillations of what Mandiberg learned each day during the durational performance.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website