Jen Liu's Hong Kong solo show exposes invisible labor behind AI systems through paintings, sculpture, and video
The Blindspot Gallery in Hong Kong unveiled Jen Liu's inaugural solo exhibition, 'I Am Cloud,' on September 17, 2024, which will be accessible until November 2. This exhibition examines the concealed human labor behind AI technologies, drawing parallels between historical and modern-day exploitation. Liu's experience as an AI trainer on clickworker.com, where she worked for 30 hours and earned $15, inspired her video piece 'I Am Cloud' (2024), which weaves together the narratives of an Amazon Mechanical Turk worker, a Xenobot, and a 19th-century Chinese migrant sex worker. The display features sculptures that release bubbles made from crushed MTurk documents and paintings such as 'If the Clouds are Thick, Many Things May be Hiding Within' (2024), crafted from e-waste, critiquing capitalist labor practices and referencing the 1770 Mechanical Turk.
Key facts
- Jen Liu's first solo show in Hong Kong is titled 'I Am Cloud'
- The exhibition runs from September 17 to November 2, 2024, at Blindspot Gallery
- Liu worked as an AI trainer on clickworker.com for 30 hours, earning $15
- The video 'I Am Cloud' (2024) connects an Amazon MTurk worker, a Xenobot, and a 19th-century Chinese migrant sex worker
- Sculptures include white cubic boxes emitting bubbles with pulverized MTurk documents and robotic sounds from a sex doll
- Paintings incorporate pulverized e-waste for a glimmering sheen and feature Microsoft's Clippy
- The exhibition references the 1770 Mechanical Turk automaton that concealed a human chess player
- Amazon Mechanical Turk workers label data for AI training with minimal compensation using bounding boxes
Entities
Artists
- Jen Liu
Institutions
- Blindspot Gallery
- Amazon Mechanical Turk
- Microsoft
- clickworker.com
Locations
- Hong Kong