The Making of a Digital (Master)Piece

This presentation is a forthright insight into the development and completion of digital artwork; This Much I’m Worth (The self-evaluating artwork) from prototype to large scale finished piece. This Much I’m Worth continually assesses and displays its sale price governed by a complex set of algorithms called “The Endorsers”. Raising questions about values and who apportions them; is it clear how we, as a society, value objects or even people or are those systems really hidden? This Much I’m Worth won the Aesthetica Prize in 2016 and since then the artist has been working on a larger scale spectacular version of the piece in full neon. Over 3 metres wide, the new piece combines 71 pieces of neon controlled, via recycled server room equipment, by the endorsers, the internet of things and other technologies. This Much I’m Worth is part of a wider body of work that addresses feminist issues, conspiracies of silence and misinformation. The final version of the piece has been a challenging and formidable project made all the more complex by the artist's own ambition to work with only women experts in fields dominated by men. The talk will also touch upon issues related to the making around: outsourcing skills, data-mining, methodologies and alternative technologies as well as practical issues of funding, documentation and ongoing algorithmic support of a digital project.