Attention Exercise: Our Collective Eyes II
2023-2024
2-channel video installation, FHD, color, sound, 12m 16s, 15m 1s, loop
Dimension variables
Attention Exercise: Our Collective Eyes series is a collaborative project with workers that records and visualizes the eye movements of individuals during their work activities. The 2022 version of the project collaborated with platform-based delivery riders, whose numbers increased following the growing demand for convenience and normalization of contact-free services due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 2024 version, Attention Exercise: Our Collective Eyes II focuses on another emerging consumer trend: convenient meals and pre-portioned meal kits.
The artist worked with meal kit workers in Gimpo and in Gwangju, South Korea, using a wearable eye tracker and data visualization to track and visualize the trajectory of their gaze throughout their entire work process (the detailed division of the labor, including washing, cutting, and packaging food) with green circles and pink lines. This reveals the performance synchronized with the specific condition and methods of labor while making visible the energy of the worker’s action inherent in the process. The audience follows the repetitive patterns of gaze and hands of the workers, experiencing the human labor and time erased from the final products.
Production credit
Participants:
K (female in 40s, worked for 4 years), Hinoaska
L (female in 50s, worked for 5 years), Hinoaska
P (female in 40s, worked for 14 years), Kim Gu-won’s Tofu
J (female in 30s, worked for 3 years), Kim Gu-won’s Tofu
C (male in 20s, worked for 1 year), Kim Gu-won’s Tofu
Location: Kim Gu-won’s Tofu(Gimpo, South Korea), Hinoaska(Gwangju, South Korea)
Production support: Asia Culture Center