Milestones - Mozilla Festival 2025
- swarnamanjari chellapandi
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
Self promotion is hard for an artist, talking about the work even harder. How lucky did I get when I got placed right next to a comfortable sofa at my installation space for Mozilla festival. I sat quietly and observed kids and adults walk past the installation. A pause, some intrigue and many questions. Some even came back to see the artwork again. Most didn't know I was the artist, and I stayed behind as I felt my explanation would kill the artwork. This was the first time I felt not compelled to talk. Sure, some explanations blossomed into interesting conversations, but watching the viewer discover the artwork through hints of their own was even more rewarding.
On the first day, a small girl walked by with a doll in one hand and leaves on the other. She sat looking at the artwork and refused to leave. Her mother had to pry her away from it. On the last day, a former data worker who had climbed the ladder to become a supervisor, held my hands and said "Thank you for your work. Thank you for making us seen."
It's powerful how an idea can make someone happy, sad, make them weep or make them feel seen. It's even more powerful when you can orchestrate that idea into life.
Presenting my work at the Mozilla Festival was always a dream ever since I detoured away from questioning the meaning of design to designing from my questions. When I first began my research into complex informations systems in 2021, I was fascinated by the range of projects presented at Mozilla Festival. They served as a cornerstone for my hope that art can be combined with asking critical questions by immersing the viewer in an emotional experience. The pandemic was roaring ahead and the festival had gone digital. I wandered through online rooms shifting through multiple browser tabs that represented the different sessions of the festival. I sought inspiration from various artists, technologists and policy makers, gaping wide eyed at their ideas and mesmerised by their discussions.
From then on, my projects revolved around research and experimental storytelling while driven by artistic vision. It was precisely because of that, my work was too artistic in places of research and too research-oriented in places of art. I struggled to fit in. More than simply a struggle to be understood, it was also an internal wrestling to identify myself as an artist.
Through the years, I then got introduced to so many writers, artists, researchers and intellectuals, and I understood how research is an inevitable part of creating an artwork. I also understood the difference between a work of research and a work of art. As my questions grew, I continued researching, being fascinated by what I read and feeding it into my creative urges to express what I felt.
That was how the "Memorial of Serial Numbers" was born.
Inspiration
With any artwork, my starting point is usually an observation in my environment that disturbs me and incites a question within. Just as the pandemic was waning, it coincided with a rise in a demand for a convenience - to be able to obtain anything with a click of a button sitting on a comfortable sofa in your home. I saw human labour being automated behind a veil of a digital interface. I remember the first time I ordered something online maybe ten years ago: doubtful about the payment interface, worried if the product might be fake or if I was being scammed. The feeling was even more strange when I ordered food; I remember feeling shy walking to the gate of my hostel to collect some food from someone who was bringing it to me from a restaurant 1 km away. When did I become so lazy?
I then moved to Goa, a city so archaic with its digital services that I still walked to the supermarket to buy my groceries. I felt relieved on one hand but the question followed me.
Gig work and human labour behind digital services became a field of inquiry. I looked into the history of gig work and it seemed longer than I knew. From call centre workers, BPO operators to Amazon M-Turk workers, the history of human labour being quantified to perform seemingly 'digital' tasks is rife with inequalities and exploitation. Beyond factory spaces in the industrial revolution, the frontier of the information revolution banked on the promise of invisibility for non-recognition of labour.
The book "Ghost Work " by Mary. L. Grey and Siddharth Suri placed the context for me to work in. Their expansive case studies gave examples of how data labour in not something new with the rise of AI but has been used in the software industry for many years. Anatomy of AI by Kate Crawford and Vladen Joler also served as inspiration for visibilising the invisible systems. Cartography of generative AI by Tallera Estampa gave me visual and storytelling inspiration. But, as with all artworks, sometimes the spark has to come from outside any of the areas you are looking at - and for me, that spark was watching the film "How to make millions before Grandma dies", a film from Thailand that made it to the Oscars.
I fell in love with the design of the graveyard in the film, a central space that the plot revolves around. The Memorial grew from that, with the colours and themes of death, but with the lightness of grass and sunshine.
Concept
The Memorial is a fictional graveyard for "The Clickworkers."
Through the experience, I want to show the giant human labour behind generative AI and how the technological industry dehumanizes such workers through remote tasking. Requesters do not know about the person completing the task (Taskers) but simply a serial number. Thus, the idea of a faceless graveyard.
The Clickworkers include modern day workers from the unknown people training AI with huge datasets of information - labelling images and text to software coders to even Influencers. In front of the machine, these hierarchies cease to exist and everybody is human labour. The aim to include people from all rungs of the ladder was to build solidarity between highly-paid tech workers and their lower-paid counterparts, exposing the inequalities within the technological industry.
The biggest challenge while making the artwork was respecting the labour, and keeping the idea of invisibility while visibilising the efforts.
How do I show faceless faces?
How do I show the dehumanization while also showing they are human?
How do I turn a dull, dreary topic into something people can feel for?
Collaboration
I had completed the artwork months before the festival - a first of its kind where I was not working the day before the deadline. But, something was missing.
I kept looking at it again and again, thinking of ways to add layers while keeping its simplicity. Should I evolve it into a digital game, a film even?
While I was thinking along these lines, two important collaborations happened.
I had joined in my new Master's programme and found a friend Beste, who loved animation. I floated the idea to her and she immediately agreed. After a short discussion and a few days, she presented a first draft - and I was in awe. I kept replaying the animation on loop and realised that I had finally found what the piece had been missing. "The graveyard has finally come to life!" I wrote to her. The leaves drifted, the seeds fluttered and the worms wiggled. The surrounding life in a place of death could be created because of her flawless animation.
Secondly, Kriti and I had always wanted to make a game. We developed a pitch in line with the theme of the Memorial for Mozfest. After moving to Barcelona, was when we started actually building it. Across time zones, shared zoom calls and rapid prototyping, "Immaterial" was born.
A game where a tech company with a proposal to build a data centre comes to your village, and you as a farmer can choose to sell your land to them or keep it. You have to manage resources such as your energy, health, money and integrity to stay alive and win the game. In the game you can buy/sell land, work to gain money or go to court if the law doesn't work for you and gain integrity.
We playtested the game with friends and people at Mozfest. There was frustration to survive, competition to win and a whole lot of feedback.
Onward, from here
In the end of 2021, I made a map of the things I want to do. I wrote down a rough ballpark of my ideas, and the following four years was about bringing them to reality. Unlike other completed work like "The Feminist Guide to Computing" and "Manifesto for the CommonWeb", this "Memorial of Serial Numbers" went through multiple iterations. I pitched the idea to many organisations and developed the idea on the way. Festivals were cancelled, funding was cut for a few while I almost got the funds sometimes and the external situations were gruelling for me to continue building on it. Then one bright summer day, I simply sat to draw. It came through. In a few days, all the moments coalesced and made sense through a film I watched about a grandmother and her grandson bonding for days before her death. The Memorial was built.
I still have so many ideas. To write, to create art and even make games out of. I have self- funded most of these works, with my parents having my back at all times. Sometimes, I get tired of navigating organisation support while keeping my creative independence. I go out of my way to work with discipline and keep myself inspired to create. After all that is what this pursuit is about.
If you or anyone you might know, is interested to support the work, please reach out. As collaborators, as investors or as connoisseurs. The door is open - and both my heart and mind welcome you.
closing with an opening
A few months ago, before I moved, Khoj - an artist organisation from Delhi reached out. They invited me to display the artwork at their exhibition titled "Are you Human?", an exhibition that sits at the intersection of art, technology and bodies.
"Look mom, I'm finally an artist!" I exclaimed to my mom on call. "You were always one." I could hear her thinking.
The day the poster was released felt surreal. Amidst names of other artists whom I had been inspired by, I am beyond honoured to be showing my work there.
The "Are you Human?" exhibition opens in Delhi on the 30th of January, at Khoj Studios and at DLF mall, Saket. "Memorial of Serial Numbers" along with a few other of my older works will be on display. I invite everyone to come visit and have a look.
----Swarna
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