Category: unit2

Interview 1 with Jia, work in Nantong Local Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Interview 2 with Isabella Wu, work as programmer in communication engineering field 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YmGb0OZZ8EnkDX0cSIAK5hdlrX3cQikM-WCGucs8sZc/edit?usp=sharing

The members of our group come from a variety of completely different professional backgrounds: communication science, finance, fashion, fine art …. So we discussed our visions of future works from our own perspectives: Wellbeing, Hybrid, Enjoyment, Sustainability, Relationships- Community, Humanity, Justice… This diversity of thought inspired us to think about our project using agriculture as a lens and metaphor.

Our definition about ” Agriculture” in our project:

Methodology and mentality can be applied into corporate and ultra-modern workspaces, mentalities. Farming ideas, farming creativity, farming culture – network to the humanity, incubator for projects. 

Rooting, taking time to take care and mature, a process and involved with what you’re doing, giving the chance for things to be ripe and great to NURTURE. 

We believe that although AI technology has many ethical hidden downsides in the future, we as individuals can use it as a tool to think positively about the progressive impact it will have. For example, in the future, with the support of AI technology, people can choose a variety of jobs or save time at work and develop their own hobbies.

In a nutshell, our interview was based on the theme of culture as a lens, around freelance and future work.

Based on the topic set by our tutor group about freelancers, I interviewed people in two workplaces, one from the government system, working in a more conventional way, and the other from a communications engineering company, working as a programmer. To find out their attitude about Job satisfaction, Ideas for future work, Thoughts on Freelance and I also asked questions about advanced technology (optimistic or pessimistic/replacement).

Because of the difference in their workplaces, their answers were very different.

Interviewee 1 is very dissatisfied with her current job because of the rigidity of her work pattern, she thinks that a large part of her current job is meaningless and if she had the chance she would love to try freelancing and try something that is useful and inspiring to society, not work full of instrumentalist. But when it comes to the impact of advanced technology such as AI on the future of her work, she takes a negative view because she believes that China needs class, as does the Chinese government system. Much of the work that unfolds requires not just efficiency and quality, even no quality, because it involves worldly wisdom, something that AI cannot handle. This reminds me of what was mentioned in my week6 reading<Inventing the future>: “Yet, for all the glossy sheen of our technological era, we remain bound by an old and obsolete set of social relations. We continue to work long hours, commuting further, to perform tasks that feel increasingly meaningless…… The glimmers of a better future are trampled and forgotten under the pressures of an increasingly precarious and demanding world. And each day, we return to work as normal: exhausted, anxious, stressed and frustrated.”

Interviewee 2 is content with her current job because of the pace and distance of the social at work, and she doesn’t like freelance because she thinks it’s too free, maybe not on schedule, and there will be less collaboration and social contact. She believes that it is completely impossible for AI to replace her work as it is only a tool.“AI actually does the work of replication, the work from 0 to 1 has to be done by real people. AI is actually called machine learning by its professional name, and it is called learning for a reason: it has to learn on material that is already there, and there is no way to talk about learning if you don’t have the basic knowledge you already have, etc.” She also believes that advances in technology have a cost and that some people’s jobs may be replaced, but that overall humans are still the ones using the tools. In her interview I noticed the point of social connection, which is one of the reasons why “people don’t want to be freelancers” that we didn’t consider in our previous vision of freelancing.

When I first step into Ingela Ihrman’s exhibition in Gaswork, I saw this solo video, it is displayed directly in front of every visitor at the very beginning of the exhibition. “What is this?” I generate this question without reading any information about this exhibition. On one side I wanted to achieve a more subjective sense of the author’s intentions, on the other side I didn’t do any pre-research in order to learn more from a speculative perspective.“Electronic endoscope” was the first word that came to my mind, then I thought of the inside of the human body – this soft pink flesh-like image undulating, bringing a sense of vitality, but at the same time a strong sense of vulnerability. What kind of world do the artist and Gaswork want to build for the visitor? With this question in mind, I entered the second space of the exhibition, the strong sense of vulnerability left over from earlier left me with a subjective and speculative feeling about the next works. The feathers created by the artist hang in mid-air in a decaying downward position in the dim light, and the embryos of the young birds are displayed like specimens in front of the visitors, all of these made me feel the fragility of life and an imbalance of rights between humans and animals: Were the birds’ feathers plucked off artificially? Are the embryos of young birds laid out in a way that resembles the display of a carcass? In the darkness of the space, the visitors could not help but lower their voices and remain silent. 

The last space is the artist’s performance video, and through the feelings and assumptions of the previous spaces, the final video inevitably points to the imbalance of power, the conflict between the bird and the human world to me: the artist wears the costume of an adult bird but exposes human hands, and the way the young are fed resembles a form of forced stuffing rather than nurturing.

After finishing this speculative tour, I read the introduction in the guidebook and the description of the oil birds on the artist’s website and realized how Gaswork tried to make the visitors perceive the artist’s intention through the spatial arrangement successfully. The sequence of the artworks, and the lighting, all directly linked to the relationship between the oilbird and humans and the curse of the oilbird’s cave, let the visitors slowly perceive the author’s empathy and tenderness for the living creatures in the process of speculation.

I think we can also use speculation as a methodology in our research and our creative works, it can be a good way to help us advance our creative work and allow the steps to extend naturally. It also allows us to present our work in a way that leads to a better understanding of our intentions as creators by the target user/reader/visitor. When we work with our MA CCC students, we can use speculative methodology to use our theoretical supports as clues to lead to our final project.