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REFLECTION
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These images weaves together imagery of circuits and textiles; past and future; wires and strings.
By selecting hands from archives, I aim to personify anonymity, with strings and wires running through the visuals to prompt viewers to ask: what do we reveal when we pull on these threads?
Some hands are cast in cement, symbolizing the toxic toll of data cleaning in China and the millions of lives lost in the Congo's extraction industries. Some are ghostlike, intentionally translucent. Some delicately pull on threads of rare earth metals mined for computer chips, while others suffocate in tangles of wires. Using hands and strings as a visual metaphors I aim to reveal the stories of “anonymous” labor behind AI technology.
As the images progress, they explore the exploitation of land and labor, connecting to THE NEXT FRONTIER (MODEL). The use of playful colors contrasts with the fragile foundations of AI infrastructure, rooted in digital colonialism and climate costs. This work positions AI as a system built on labor, material, and capital—revealing the often invisible, cheap, and intense labor across Asia, Africa, and beyond in electronics manufacturing.
As Lisa Nakamura writes, “ Looking inside digital culture means both looking back in time to the roots of the computing industry and the specific material production practices that positioned race and gender as commodities in electronics factories. This labor is temporally hidden, within a very early period of digital computing history, and hidden spatially.” (937)
Inspired by the work of