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What do we mean by ‘labour’ in the digital age? The work is a contemporary reboot of the morale raising BBC radio show, 'Workers' Playtime', which was broadcast from the factory floor throughout the 1940s and 1950s. When I made the piece I was thinking about a lot of different ideas that I think inform the work. For example, there seems to be a big disparity between the purported benefits of automation in terms of greater leisure time (‘play’) and the resulting reality of rising unemployment and the demise of manufacturing. We also seem to use a lot of this ‘spare’ time looking at screens. There is also the idea of labour in the newer ‘digital industries’, such as computer software, video games, mobile phones, internet banking etc. where we seem to be replicating the same ‘Fordist’ work structures that we had in industrial manufacturing with a decomposition of tasks again resulting in an alienation of labour. Finally, on a more flippant side, there’s the idea of the robot as a ‘worker’ with rights – perhaps as artificial intelligence develops we will need to think about how we can give robots more interesting jobs or ‘play’ time so they don’t get bored?
David Theobald is a video artist based in London. Although originally trained as a chemical engineer, ten years ago he decided to change profession and dedicate himself to becoming a full-time artist, completing an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths in 2008. Most recently, his main works have been animations structured from photographs, scanned images or rendered objects, blending these together to create a familiar yet alien environment. These may be structured as conventional films or as continuous loops with no discernible beginning or end. |
| [] back [] | David Theobald is based in East Twickenham, UK. [] www.davidtheobald.com [] |