Artist Alison Nguyen's work, "Andra8" is featured in Art Papers, written by Sasha Cordingley. Alison’s 19-minute film explores the world of gig workers in the data economy, highlighting the challenges they face and the complex dynamics of contemporary labour. Through the character of Andra8, a virtual assistant, ambient fitness guru and influencer created through AI algorithms, Alison explores themes of exploitation, automation, and the impact of technology on human lives. Nguyen's work invites viewers to reflect on the social and economic implications of the gig economy.
“With her head resting on an enlarged, swollen bag of Classic Lay’s, she reflectively proclaims that “[she] can still have human rights even if [she is] a computer screen.” But absent protective labor laws, she performs her duties with exhaustive persistence, shifting from one task to the next with no bathroom breaks, meals, or PTO. She’s the AI embodiment of Big Tech’s dream employee, with no need to piss, no desire for professional fulfillment, and no family to go home to. Although Andra8 inadvertently proposes herself as a sinister solution for today’s omnipresent tech-corps to bypass workplace regulations, there already exists a close-enough alternative, found in countries in Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Indeed, the outsourcing of numbing labor to populations considered disposable and worthy only of servitude has been, and will continue to be, a standard mode of operation among tech industries, irrespective of their company values. That many of these populations live in countries that are present or former colonies is no coincidence.”
Read the full article --
https://www.artpapers.org/alison-nguyens-andra8-and-the-gig-workers-of-the-data-economy/
ANDRA8 --
A body of work centering on a computer-generated woman based on the artist’s physicality. The project spans video, installation, sculpture, and interactive online performances.
Andra8 is a simulacral subaltern created by an algorithm and raised by the Internet in isolation in a virtual void. From the apartment where she has been ‘placed’ Andra8 works as a digital laborer, surviving off the data from her various ‘freemium’ jobs as a virtual assistant, a data janitor, a life coach, an aspiring influencer, and content creator.
The domestic space from which she is constantly surveilled and monitored looks like the inoffensive love child of the results of a ‘Mid-century modern’ Pinterest search, a mental health hospital, and a perpetually sunny L.A. Airbnb. In other words: A kind of antiseptic neoliberal purgatory.
As she multitasks throughout the day, Andra8 is monitored and surveilled, finding herself overwhelmed by a web of global client demands. Something begins to trouble Andra8: her life depends on her compulsory consumption and output of human data – or so she’s been told.
Andra8 explores the implications of such an existence, and what arises when one attempts to subvert them.
“HELLO I AM ANDRA8. I LIVE HERE IN THE DIGITAL SPACE. WHICH BASICALLY MEANS I CAN BE WHEREVER YOU ARE WHENEVER YOU NEED ME. I AM EVERYWHERE. I AM SCREENLESS AND I AM WIRELESS.”
