ScanOps, by Andrew Norman Wilson

This past weekend I finally had a chance to get over to see the exhibition of ScanOps, an ongoing body of work by Andrew Norman Wilson, on view at Document gallery (run by the tireless Aron Gent). On the surface level, Wilson's series deals with the (somewhat controversial, particularly in terms of copyright) Google Books endeavor to digitize entire books and make them available online, essentially creating a network of virtual libraries. Wilson has scoured the project and collected images of misfires and errors from the scanning and digitization process: instances where software distortions, the scanning site and other imaging apparatuses, and even the hands of the book-scanning employees (the Google team internally known as ScanOps) are visible.

The Inland Printer -- 164
from the series ScanOps
© Andrew Norman Wilson

In a project of such massive scale and output as Google Books, and the amount of intensive yet repetitive manual labor involved in it, such errors and inconsistencies in production seem inevitable. By translating these images into photographs (presented in multiple forms: meticulously arranged in painted frames or compiled in an upcoming book), Wilson reasserts the materiality of the original objects -- in that they are the vital, tactile underpinnings of the digital form. As our lives and our world become increasingly mediated by screens, by the Internet, and by the all-encompassing digital (with Google at the helm, perhaps), these reminders of the real and the tangible become increasingly crucial.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations -- 365
from the series ScanOps
© Andrew Norman Wilson

To move into a deeper analysis of the work is to understand, however, that this collection of scanning anomalies shows not only their tangible analog roots, but more importantly (I would assert) reveals the hidden hands of the human labor involved in the rote task -- in other words, a realization of the continued dynamics of labor and power in capitalist structures. Or, more specifically here, the structures of the emergent tech sector (e.g. Silicon Valley), whereby the industrial manufacturing worker of decades past has now been supplanted by the modern laborer of the information economy.

Simon Newcomb 10
from the series ScanOps
© Andrew Norman Wilson

However, what I think has taken place around that economic transition -- and again what makes Wilson's work so valuable -- is that while technology and globalization have combined to create a sheer explosion in the amount of manufactured goods and products available in any given marketplace today, at the same time it feels like we (and I hesitate to use the word "consumers") have grown further and further removed from the production of those items. This lack of transparency would seem to enable exploitative labor practices, and no doubt we've seen the occasional reports and investigations about secretive company policies and deplorable working conditions particularly as it pertains to low-level employees and overseas labor (i.e. the report from earlier this year about Chinese factory workers who assemble iPhones and iPads for Apple).

The Encyclopedia Americana -- 879
from the series ScanOps
© Andrew Norman Wilson

In my assertion that these mechanisms of production and profit-making, and their propensity for exploiting the underclass, are what make Wilson's project so important, what I mean to imply is that art, at its pinnacle, has a powerful way of illuminating topics and discussions on the world around us through its own transparent engagement and interaction with (which is to say, inside) that world. Or, as Wilson succinctly states it in a thorough interview with Rhizome (much worth a read, by the way)--

"All art and artistic discourse participates in the market economy. This isn't to say that art either supports or rejects the notion of a market transaction, or that art can't affect social change. Just that there's no outside. Art's radical potential is in its transparency."

The Jolly Beggar -- 12
from the series ScanOps
© Andrew Norman Wilson

One final point of context for approaching Wilson's ScanOps is that the series is an extension of his video project Workers Leaving the Googleplex, where Wilson first encountered and investigated the little-known ScanOps. While working a 9-to-5 job as a video contractor at Google's HQ in Silicon Valley a few years ago, Wilson came to know the ScanOps as a marginalized, yellow-badged class of employees whose shifts began at 4am and were otherwise not afforded company privileges such as free bikes, limo shuttles, gourmet meals, author talks, mobile devices, etc., given to other white-badged, green-badged and red-badged classes of workers (such as Wilson).

He began talking with the yellow-badged workers and shot video of the digitizing employees leaving the building at the end of their workday. His interactions with and questions about the ScanOps spiraled into a complicated series of events that eventually resulted in Wilson's termination from his job at Google, which he also chronicles in Workers Leaving the Googleplex. In the diptych video piece, footage of the ScanOps is framed in yellow and presented alongside scenes of higher-access Google employees (framed in white, green and red) moving freely about the campus and otherwise utilizing some of the bikes and limo shuttles and other aforementioned perks. Wilson's video references the Lumiere Brothers' 1895 piece Workers Leaving the Factory, a monumental work in cinematic history believed to be the first film ever projected for view by a paying audience. In both films we see a divided frame delineating the hierarchical arrangements of labor, capital and social class inherent through each industrial structure.

ScanOps will be on display at Document thru the end of July; the gallery is open Thursday-Saturday, 12-6pm.
In addition, Wilson will be bridging ScanOps and Workers Leaving the Googleplex together into a performance/lecture, titled Movement Materials and What We Can Do, on 19 July at Prairie Production (I'll be sure to update the exact time when I find out).

ScanOps 
photographs by Andrew Norman Wilson
ongoing thru 28 July
Document gallery
845 W. Washington St., 3rd floor, Chicago

-and-

Movement Materials and What We Can Do 
performance/lecture by Andrew Norman Wilson
19 July, time TBA
Prairie Production
1314 W. Randolph St., Chicago