The fourth lecture of the OGR YOU cycle in 2019 is Artificial Intelligence and the Labor of Care by Elisa Giardina Papa, on Thursday  16 May, 6.30 pm. The artist presents her most recent body of work, that addresses the politics and economies of affective and care labor in relation to artificial intelligence and automation.

This is how Giardina Papa introduces her talk:

“What’s an invisible boyfriend?
A digital version of a real boyfriend without the baggage.
Conversations are powered by real creative writers. No bots.”

The workers contracted by the “Invisible Boyfriend” app are part of an emerging class of precarious freelancers who provide care and affective labor online. In my latest project, Technologies of Care, I visualize this new invisible workforce of caregivers who, through a variety of websites and apps, provide clients with customized goods and experiences, erotic stimulation, companionship, and emotional support. The stories collected include a social media fan-for-hire, an ASMR artist, an online dating coach, and a human chatbot. In my current project “I’ll Learn to See Myself Exactly as You Want Me To,” I extend this exploration to the invisible human infrastructure that sustains Artificial Intelligence. The project is the result of a three months’ experience as a micro-task worker for machine vision companies. It is a documentation of the low-paid, low-skilled, and often alienating labor involved in testing, training, and correcting the errors of machine vision. Among the tasks performed are: error checking for motion tracking systems installed in self-driving cars, and the recording of my facial expressions to be used as a data set to train emotion detection algorithms.

 

Elisa Giardina Papa is an Italian artist whose work investigates gender, sexuality, and labor in relation to neoliberal capitalism and the Global South. Her work has been exhibited and screened at MoMA (New York), Whitney Museum [Sunrise/Sunset Commission], Seoul Mediacity Biennale 2018, Unofficial Internet Pavilion of 54th Venice Biennial, XVI Quadriennale di Roma, rhizome.org  [Download Commission], The Flaherty NYC, among others. Giardina Papa received an MFA from RISD, and a BA from Politecnico of Milan, and she is currently pursuing a PhD in film and media studies at University of California Berkeley. She lives and works in New York and Sicily.

www.elisagiardinapapa.org

 

All OGR YOU events, curated by Barbara Casavecchia in collaboration with Sergey Kantsedal, are free and open to the public upon reservation.