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“ph0n3_f4rm📲🌾” is a networked installation work that explores the often obfuscated full lifetime of technological goods (smartphones) and the impact on environments, human labor costs, and the cycle of internet instant gratification and addiction. Phone farming, as an IRL practice, is a method utilized to create passive income by exploiting paid-to-watch apps or other incentive based programs on a device. A phone farm refers to the setup wherein multiple phones are re-programmed with custom software to repeat actions – such as ad views, clicks, likes, surveys, registrations, installs, etc. – to create the illusion of engagement without the user needing to manually initiate these activities. It’s a common misconception that most phone farm setups are physically located in China and SouthEast Asia, but the truth is that phone farming is a global practice.
As an artwork, “ph0n3_f4rm📲🌾” repurposes smartphones built using overseas Filipino labor in China to assemble a phone farming setup. The brand of phone is researched and then arrangements made to obtain a previously used phone. The phones are then re-programmed with custom-written software and assembled into a phone farm. This aspect of the work hopes to call attention to the labor practices/human rights issues surrounding technological fabrication and asks open-ended questions about technology and ethics. Questions like: who are the intended end users for these products when people from post-colonial and economically marginalized populations produce these goods that they themselves could not afford? What are the environmental/economic/social costs for this kind of production and which communities pay the greatest price?
The assembled phone farm is intended to be physically installed in a gallery space as a kind of networked sculptural installation. The phones are re-purposed into new media art objects. The piece will also passively generate an income for the run of the exhibition. This income will be donated to non-profit advocacy and support groups for overseas (Filipino) workers. The installation environment will also be optimized for the phone farm: cooler temperatures to allow the phones to run more efficiently, maximum wifi bandwidth, low light levels to re-route all electricity to the phones. This is done to highlight the environmental differences that maximize digital efficiency while regarding human labor as expendable, and perhaps, provide a glimpse into a dystopian future built completely around the demands of digital technology and the societies that can afford to use it.