[iDC] Virtual sweatin’ at Sundance

Tue Feb 12 16:20:36 UTC 2008

Hi Stephanie,

Thanks for sharing the details of the project. This certainly articulates
many of the odd aspects of the Second Life economy.

One thing that is particularly compelling about your virtual sweatshop is
the co-operative element. Most of the other jobs in SL are solo
operations: camping, dancing platforms or else services with a client:
building objects, escorts, etc.

I was just on a panel called "Real World Implications of Virtual
Economies" at the Floating Points symposium through Emerson College and
Turbulence. This was following the Mixed Realities exhibition:
(http://www.turbulence.org/mixed_realities/)

At the symposium, we discussed many facets of the economies of both Second
Life and World of Warcraft. Some key differences arise.

In the practice of Goldfarming, the workers are often in countries in
parts of Asia. Usually young men around 18 or 19 years old who are living
onsite in dorm rooms with bunk beds and by day working 14+ hours to
generate profits for their company and generating goods in the form of
virtual characters for westerners. It mirrors the sweatshop labor
practices in many ways -- though diverges from them in a few.

For the Mixed Realities exhibition, Victoria Scott and myself showed a new
work called No Matter (www.nomatter.org) which  transforms imaginary
objects (e.g. the Holy Grail, Time Machine, Schrodinger's Cat) through
Second Life and into the real world as paper replicas (thanks to OGLE by
Eyebeam).

The critical component of this project is a study of the economy of Second
Life: we paid builders and artists to make these objects for them and
tracked the wages we paid them. What resulted are things such as a unique
object of the Trojan Horse that cost us $12.00 to have built (over 25
hours of labor). In the process of working with people in SL, we gained a
deep understanding of the economy.

One divergent factor is that virtual labor in SL (we also talked to
campers, dancers, etc.) operates from developed countries. The sweatshop
practices can mimic RL practices but without the real economic need, they
are gesture rather than impact.

In reality, the wages garnered in SL are less than minimum wage for the
people using it. In many cases, users probably spend more on their power
bill than the wages earned.

The question then is why?

A certain psychology of desire is often at operation. Many users don't
want to transfer money in from their credit card -- even though this would
be the sensible decision. So they try to earn Lindens. Probably all of us
in Second Life are irrational consumers but it still baffles me to see
irrational producers.

The other thing that we discovered when working with the builders is while
some of them were building objects for us to earn Linden dollars to buy
goods for their avatars, many felt a connection with the No Matter
project. They wanted to contribute to the final artwork. The amount they
made served as a token of their time.

I also recall a conversation I had with someone in SL about a year ago.
She wanted to do escorting in SL because of the novelty of it: the fact
that you could try something like this without any consequences since
there is no physical act and no social stigma (since most people on SL
keep their identity private). From your description, it seems as if the
desire to work in a virtual sweatshop as a project is part of it -- and
the fact that at the end of it, you can just quit Second Life and the
virtual factory disappears.

Best,

Scott Kildall

www.kildall.com

> Dear IDC’ers,
>
> In contributing to the discussion on Second Life and the politics of
> virtual labor I’d like to report on a hybrid reality, social
> networking project I recently exhibited/performed at the Sundance
> Film Festival with Jeff Crouse, Senior Research Fellow at Eyebeam in
> NYC. The project titled “Invisible Threads” explores the growing
> intersection between labor, emerging virtual economies and real life
> commodities through the creation of a designer jeans “sweatshop” in
> Second Life (SL). The factory virtually manufactures designer jeans
> that are “teleported” into the real world upon completion and worn by
> real live people. Simulating an actual textile facility, machines
> include Jaquard weaving looms, dye vats, laser fabric cutters,
> industrial sewing machines and quality control. SL citizens hired
> through job recruitment ads placed in the SL classifieds operate the
> various machines as well as serve as floor managers and security.
> I’ll first give an overview of how the project works and then I’ll
> divulge into the nitty-gritty of being a menacing, virtual factory
> manager.
>
> For Sundance, we set up a temporary store at the New Frontier on Main
> Street – Double Happiness Jeans. Designer jean styles include “No
> Pants Left Behind”, “MyPants”, “LowRider” and “Casual Friday” in
> either boot cut, skinny leg, relaxed or classic. Customers place
> their jean orders via streaming audio and video into the virtual
> factory. SL workers watch the stream projected on a wall of the
> factory Orwellian style. In an assembly line fashion, the first
> worker starts the production process that involves loading cotton
> bales into the Jaquard loom. Once the fabric is made it moves down
> the assembly line through each machine. Each worker stationed at a
> machine is responsible for selecting the correct option based on the
> customer’s order, men’s or women’s size for example. The worker also
> has a limited time to press the correct button otherwise the assembly
> line stops and the order has to start over. At the end of the
> production process, the jeans go through the SL to real life (RL)
> “portal” resulting in an output from a large format printer.
> Customers at Sundance were able to watch the entire production
> process on a large flat screen installed in the physical space. Once
> in the real world, the jeans require simple assembly before being
> worn. Using what we call the pizza roller cutter, the jeans printed
> on a cotton canvas are quickly cut out and glue gunned together with
> stitched reinforcement on the crotch. (After many adhesive tests and
> many noxious fumes we found the glue gun to be the best and safest
> adhesive. Yet after sitting around in the jeans the glue became
> heated in the crotch area – need I elaborate further!)
>
> So what was it like to run a designer jeans sweatshop amongst the
> stars? Well aside from the cheap thrill of having Robert Redford join
> my social network by signing my “MyPants”, the project raises some
> serious questions about the current cultural production of play and
> its relationship to outsourced, virtual labor. The project is based
> on research in motion economics, Taylorism and current goldfarming/
> virtual sweatshops.
>
> In case you aren’t familiar with goldfarming, for over the past five
> years, virtual sweatshops have been springing up all over the
> developing world. These makeshift sweatshops, usually a small shop or
> apartment with dormitory-style housing, employ predominantly migrant
> workers and single mothers to work 12-16 hour shifts or more
> “playing” games. The job involves either digging/farming for virtual
> gold and other assets or leveling-up characters (power leveling). The
> virtual assets and avatars are then sold online for real world
> currency with the sweatshop entrepreneurs raking in the cash (a good
> resource on the topic and model of distributed filmmaking http://
> www.chinesegoldfarmers.com and of course Julian Dibbell).
>
> The role of play and use of game-based models in the workforce has
> become incredibly pervasive as exemplified in corporate culture
> (www.seriosity.com, www.thegogame.com), education
> (www.instituteofplay.org) and advertising (Chevron’s “Energyville” -
> http://www.willyoujoinus.com/energyville). As Deleuze states in
> “Society of Control”, society has evolved into a “school of perpetual
> training” where the educational system feeds the corporation and what
> better way than through the use of play and games.
>
> We chose Second Life as our medium to explore the conflation of
> leisure/entertainment and labor within the context of play and game-
> based models. Second Life obviously does not follow a traditional
> game model. Although educational institutions are starting to
> populate the world for online training and archiving purposes (which
> I am not dismissing), SL is ultimately about consumption and
> simulating upward mobility. You can have your dream mansion, look
> like Anna Nicole in her good days and drive a slick hovercraft.
>
> Throughout the project we learned a lot about our workers. In the
> early job interview phase, we asked workers why they wanted to work
> in our factory and what expectations they had. Common jobs in SL are
> either camping where you sit in one spot for a period of time to gain
> Lindens (SL money) or escort services that are very similar to real
> world adult entertainment. (If one has building or scripting skills,
> more money can be made but for now I’ll just focused on unskilled
> labor.) Almost all of the workers had tried the other jobs and wanted
> a “decent” job in their second life. Most treat their second life
> with the respect and dignity of their first life – they want a good
> job in order to live a good life with nice things in SL. Several had
> previous factory experience! Over several days of training sessions
> and throughout the work days at Sundance workers developed
> camaraderie, similar to what happens at RL jobs where you interact
> with the same people on a day-to-day basis. A similar camaraderie and
> the experience of fun on the job have also been noted in the world of
> the goldfarmers.
>
> So how is our factory a sweatshop and furthermore, how do you create
> the embodied, visceral conditions of a sweatshop in a synthetic
> world? For the goldfarmers, the general worker demographic, the
> amount of hours worked, the dormitory-style living conditions and the
> pay (slightly more than agricultural work) closely resembles the
> scenario of many real world sweatshops. Plus we must consider the
> actual job tasks involved. Digging for gold and slaying virtual
> tigers for up to 16 hours a day is a very repetitive task that does
> not involve a steep learning curve. And I’m sure most people on this
> list are familiar with repetitive stress injuries such as Carpal
> Tunnel Syndrome and other neck and back strain incurred from
> prolonged computer use. Goldfarmers receive no health benefits
> either. At least not to my knowledge.
>
> In our “sweatshop”, workers received 200 Lindens an hour, about $.80
> USD depending on the daily exchange rate, for basically pushing a
> button. Workers also received a 500 m2 parcel of virtual land in
> front of the factory on Eyebeam Island that they can use for up to
> six months (TBD). This is about enough land for a medium size house
> and small yard. We set up the parcels with small shack-like housing
> to see how the factory village would evolve over the next few months.
> Some workers have chosen to keep the shacks while others have
> modified them to resemble more upscale dwellings or completely
> fantastical habitats. If we view this within the economy of SL, their
> lifestyle and salary could be considered blue collar to middle class.
> The worker could afford clothes (a pair of designer-like jeans in SL
> averages about 150 Lindens) and could work towards owning a small
> home but could not afford to own virtual property, the ultimate
> commodity in SL. Yet if we extend the virtual workers economics into
> the real world, they obviously couldn’t afford to live in the first
> world.
>
> I realize our project is highly symbolic. Workers did not work full-
> time or overtime and worked from the comfort of their own homes. For
> the visitors/customers at Sundance, most not at all familiar with art
> and technology work or Second Life, the project got them thinking
> about how our products get made and about new models of production –
> telematic labor and a global, virtual workforce. Since the project
> resembled a retail store/kiosk, visitors were initially drawn to the
> crazy jeans hanging on our clothing racks. Everything you find on a
> real pair of jeans (pockets, belt loops, zippers) is printed onto the
> fabric but in exaggerated form becoming a characterization of the
> latest jeans styles – rips with knees sticking out, overly acid
> rinses (complete environmental hazard btw), the MyPants social
> networking jeans, the LowRider with boxers hanging out and a Double
> Happiness/Tommy Hilfiger logo (don’t worry Trebor we saved a pair for
> you). The jean prices were in both Linden dollars and US currency to
> show the relationship between the price of jeans and the workers’
> wages. It was also interesting to hear feedback from visitors who had
> seen Alex Rivera’s film debuting at Sundance called “Sleep Dealers”
> that is also focused on telematic labor (and won 2 awards, yeah!).
> What at first was the role of a retail sales person during the
> holiday season answering questions about size and fit evolved into a
> platform for discussing these critical issues with the general public
> (and many super smart kids!).
>
> Although I could probably continue talking about the project for
> another 10 pages of email because it resonates on so many levels I’ll
> stop here. Our future plans include a potential showing at Fashion
> Week which I feel would be the ultimate success of our mission (if
> you have any contacts in the industry please send them our way) and
> an iteration that functions similar to mechanical turk is also on the
> table. Being good guys playing the role of bad guys has also made us
> think about ways to advocate for virtual workers rights, an issue
> Edward Castronova has been blogging about (http://
> terranova.blogs.com). I would also like to post/publish more about
> the project, specifically conversations with our virtual workers –
> job recruitment interviews, worker expectations, feedback on working
> in the factory. Maybe a virtual Studs Turkel’s “Working”.
>
> And last but not least, I welcome your feedback on the project and
> thoughts/comments on any of the issues I’ve attempted to tackle. I’d
> be happy to share my resources/delicious links. More info about the
> project including press links is available on the project site along
> with SLurl:
> www.doublehappinessjeans.com
>
> Visit the factory in SL: Eyebeam Island 204/43/27
>
> My own site is www.pan-o-matic.com and my not-so-updated blog with
> related projects is at www.pan-o-matic.com/blog
>
> Jeff Crouse's work located at http://www.jeffcrouse.info
> (aka Supreme Hoodoo)
>
> Look forward to continuing the discussion

>
> Cheers,
>
> Stephanie Rothenberg
> (aka Doctor Rodenberger)
>
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