Information
Knowbotic Research >
»Mental imMigration«, 2001
Co-Workers & Funding:
Master in Multimedia http://www.mastermultimedia.unifi.it/
Technology
Display
"Mental imMigration" - a collective networked environment which allows on a playful level experiental approaches to new forms of global teleworking. map
scenarios
profiles
emulator
interface
In each cell the player becomes represented by a specific female avatar. The avatar stands for different work forms: programmer, service worker, enterpreneur, secretary, etc..., which has to perform several tasks in the game environment. For solving these tasks the player has to achieve insight views in the daily living and working requirements of Indian female teleworkers
Descriptions & Essays
Mental imMigration is a collective networked environment which allows on a playful level experiental approaches to new forms of global teleworking. This work requires from teleworkers a mental, immaterial migration in another cultural logic. This does not imply a traditional concept of migration, i.e. the physical leaving of a "home" caused by political and/or other existential circumstances, or the exterritorialisation of a cultural identity. Thus mental immigration does not require a physical travel. The already existing physical working and living situation of a worker stay the same , but the immaterial part of the work (the service) is transferred in another cultural context. (i.e Call Centers of global enterprises: service workers in the so called third world take over the call service after office closing-hours in the western part of the world. These teleworkers are performing a double consciousness, to be here and there, a form of consciousness which influences the conditions of language, of gender, and infiltrates thus the roles of education,of work, of citizen, ETC. - one has to play in tele-jobs. (V. Grassmuck).
The actual tele-working conditions provoke rather a blind copying of western cultural logics (workers in call centers imitate western
dialects in providing technology support, transcriptions of texts and
programming styles are trained linear in western styles of working and thinking instead of rearticulating them through a personal
confrontation). These enables a digital divide between those who are able to switch virtuosly between different cultural and technological structures and those who are not able or willing to do so.
(knowbotic research)
Literature
Meyer, Eva. »Me as MacGhillie.« In Opaque Presence. Manual of Latent Invisibilities, edited by Andreas Broeckmann and Knowbotic Research. Berlin, Zürich: Diaphenes Verlag, 2010.
Broeckmann, Andreas. »The Naked Bandit in the Theatre of Visibilities. Control, Attention
and Performance in Recent Projects by Knowbotic Research.« Knowbotic Research (online) (2010).
Schmidt, Sabine Maria. »be prepared! tiger!.« Article Artist´s Homepage.
Nechvatal, Joseph. Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances. Saarbrücken: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009, 2009.
Paul, Christiane. Digital Art. World of Art Series, New York: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 2008.
Popper, Frank. From Technological to Virtual Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.
krcf. »Transcoding Sovereignty: Naked Bandit/Here, Not Here/White Sovereign.« In Sarai Reader 2005: Bare Acts, edited by Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Jeebesh Bagchi and Geert Lovink, 111-114. Delhi: Sarai Media Lab, 2005.
Arns, Inke and Jacob Lillemose. »Es arte contemporáneo, imbecil - Comisarios de arte digital para
sacarlos del gueto, a minima.« new media, actual art 13 (2005): 164-175.
krcf. »Knowbotic Research The Dilemma: Naked bandit Transcoding Extra-territorialities,
Floating Sovereignties and Non-publics.« keine genaue Jahresangabe.
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