Catalog for the Post-Human

Parsons & Charlesworth

Artwork description:

Catalog for the Post-Human (CFTPH) is a satirical multimedia installation that presents a collection of sculptural works and animations with the appearance of a near-future tech organization’s trade fair booth. This immersive work features 10 quasi products - objects that look like real consumer tech products but are in fact fictional prototypes - designed to provoke conversations about the impact of enhancement and surveillance technologies upon an increasingly contingent workforce.

Drawing from interviews with scientists and labor experts, and contemporary theories concerning the treatment of contingent workers, the project postulates how an extreme work ethic, propelled by late capitalism, drives the creation and use of ethically questionable human enhancement products. Example objects include an inflatable jacket with built-in IV drip to avoid the need for food breaks, a watch for testing stress levels in the body, a set of tools for modifying the sleep cycle to align it with an economic algorithm, and a pill dispenser that allows you to “dial up” a particular cognitive state and take the appropriate pharmaceutical to reach it.

The project comments upon how humans are placed in direct competition with AI systems while also being forced to collaborate with them to quantify their physical and mental capacities, and expedite work processes. By encountering “new products” that help users cope with a society that is not human-centered but instead propelled and mediated by post-human systems, the viewer is equipped to question the ethics of how technologies are being be applied in our workplace culture.