Constant Ecology: Amalia Lindo

In 2020 the various cultural, economic, environmental and global ecologies we find ourselves undergoing major upheavals and transformations. From the unprecedented bushfires to the global pandemic, these changes to our contingent and fragile ecology require urgent reflection and critical scrutiny. In response, four independent art organisations—Blindside, CAVES, KINGS Artist-Run and West Space—have developed Constant Ecology, a collaborative initiative that seeks to address this current moment by supporting a series of in-home residencies by artists and creatives based in Victoria.

Constant Ecology commissioned eight artists to undertake a two-month, at-home residency during this period of isolation, to allow artists to think-through, unpack and creatively respond to the current ecological crisis in all of its manifestations.

The artists participating in Constant Ecology include: Maya Hodge, Joseph L. Griffiths, Amalia Lindo, Amy Jane Parker, Kate Ellis, Sam Peterson, Kate Wallace, and Noriko Nakamura.

Blindside liaison Chloé Hazelwood is supporting Amalia Lindo in this residency.

This project will contract ‘crowdworkers’ from Amazon’s digital labour marketplace Mechanical Turk, to upload a 15-second video clip that represents a ‘view’ of or on their current environment as a result of the global pandemic, along with one sentence that describes their point of perspective. Each diverse visual interpretation of this task will form the basis of a video installation presenting a collective experience of isolation as a result of Covid-19.

As the global pandemic further positions labour into the digital arena, and unemployment rises, crowdsourcing platforms are one way for workers to adapt to changes in their environment. As an artist regularly working with digital media platforms, this outsourced activity will allow me to improve my own algorithmic video creations—sanctioning finer control in relation to location, context and timing. The privacy of each participant will be protected on server platforms external to Amazon. This will be achieved through the support of data scientist, Dr Tim Lynam, who will generously assist in configuring the required servers, software and data storage. Each video presented will have been appropriately sourced using methods that uphold the moral rights of individual participants by providing a renumeration for the service provided. The significant refinement of the algorithmic tools used to generate the outcomes of this project will situate the work more inclusively in current artificial intelligence (AI) best practice.