$ Value and Values

In Conversation with Macy Siu

Join us as Macy Siu gives us the lowdown on another development from the Digital Economies Lab – the Offer/Need Machine. In an era where the gig economy has monetized every informal network from ride sharing to pet sitting, the Offer/Need Machine proposes a network of decentralized reciprocity. Pay close attention to when Siu explains the need for an anti-capitalist model and more-than-human design.

One unexpected “viral” consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic is the somewhat forced digital education that many faced and the renewed inspiration to use technology in unprescribed ways. For those selected to participate in the Digital Economies Lab, there already was the invitation to consider alternative and future relations between technology, art and culture; however, it is within the context of the pandemic and mass social upheaval that there was a deafeningly loud question of sustainability for the current model of monetizing labour and a critical assessment of who it serves. Join us as DEL participant, artist, lawyer and foresight strategist Macy Siu discusses co-developing the prototype for the Offer Need Machine, a network of decentralized reciprocity for creatives. Resisting the monetization of networks in the ever growing gig economy, the team behind the Offer Need Machine is breaking down the mechanics of power, generosity, and care to imagine a digital and physical space where creatives could do more than just exchange hard skills. Instead, imagine a space where artists could participate in, as Siu suggests, hard discussions. With a challenge as great as eroding established attitudes around the value of cultural labour, it is no surprise the research required to build the Offer Need Machine demands the machine be broken in order to build a more resilient model. Listen closely, for you may just catch there is more than one machine that is in need of breaking.

More by Macy Siu:

Macy Siu (@_macysiu_)

Macy Siu (@macymssiu)

Memory Work | Possible futures of women’s labour

More about Macy Siu and her projects:

Directions to Nowhere in Particular

People of CARFAC Ontario

The Offer Need Machine Collaborators:

Produced by the Artengine Stream Team:

Mikke Gordon aka Seiiizi https://twitter.com/s3iiizi

Ryan Stec

Kimberly Sunstrum https://www.kmbrlysnstrm.com/

Editorial Assistant

Erin Galt

Production Design Consultation

Leslie Marshall/MAVNetwork http://mavnetwork.com/

Post-Production Support: Chris Ikonomopoulos

DEL Theme Music by Mikki Gordon aka Seiiizi

Artengine’s Digital Economies Lab brought together a diverse group of artists, designers and other creatives to rethink the infrastructure of cultural production in the 21st century.

Funding for the Digital Economies Lab was received through the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Strategies Fund.

There is a bit of magic in an in-person gathering, but I’ve also seen and experienced, myself, ways that online gatherings have been facilitated in a way where you are feeling that connection and that bond with those people who are sharing that space with you. It would be interesting to kind of explore that toggling between the in-person and the online space and also what other third spaces might emerge.

I find being human-centred, you're ignoring all the deeply entrenched ties that we have with our environment, with other beings, with spaces.

How Does Culture Shape Sound?

What does it mean to speak of “aural culture?” What does listening offer, as a tool or technique for understanding our world, that visual perception cannot? The sounds that fill our lives are dense with information about the interwoven cultures to which we belong, and approaches to their investigation can take similarly varied routes. For Linda-Ruth Salter, language is a primary element of culture. Expressed aloud it is a richly coded meaning system, but it can also speak volumes when forced into silence.

Words Within Words

Organizing Creative Labour

In this conversation Tim Maughan chats with us about digital infrastructure, the role of organized labour in the creative landscape, and the DEL project Artwork_Local404. Join us, as we discuss technology and capitalism, the benefits of organizing, and what form collective action might take. Maughan also talks about how we need to rethink many of the platforms of tools of the digital world as public infrastructure: this may change how we understand what the government could do with them.