Biological Labor
Installation
Biological Labor
Presented at various locations
Machines are ousting us. As it happened some time ago to horses after the invention of the steam engine, humans are becoming obsolete to perform mechanical labour. Soon, with the advance of artificial intelligence, it will also affect our possibilities to be useful workers performing intellectual labour.
Alone in The Netherlands there are 1,700 KW of unexploited electricity to be harvested from human body heat.
A single human body at rest radiates 100 watts of excess heat. Normally that energy is wasted. Using thermoelectric generators we convert the temperature differential between the human body and the ambient into usable electricity. The electricity generated is fed to a computer that produces cryptocurrency.
In order to maximize the amount of capital produced, instead of mining the currently most valuable cryptocurrency (Bitcoin) we mine recently created cryptocurrencies (Altcoins) that still hold a low value in the market, therefore having a potentially big space for growing in value.
The Institute of Human Obsolescence ran 4 different operations extracting biological labour for 22, 69, 39 and 82 hours. Those 212 hours were divided in working shifts of 1, 2 or 3 hours, 37 different workers participated in the process.
The IoHO explores this scenario and tries to ask questions on how to reposition the role of humans in society, particularly how to cope with a labour-market dominated by machines.
Becoming obsolete will create a reality in which new forms of labour will emerge and flourish. Our aim is to explore, question and challenge scenarios of that transition.