JAMES COUPE
art projects
Categories: Art

The city of Xiamen, China, contains a “painting village”, where thousands of artists create oil paintings to-order, typically converting photographs of weddings, families and pets into oil paintings. These artists are generally unseen, yet another example of invisible, instrumentalized human labor. In this work, ten artists from the painting village were approached via instapainting.com and, rather than copy other peoples’ photographs, were asked to paint self-portraits.

Categories: Art

Exhibition: Exhibited at International Center of Photography , New York City, January 23 – May 17, 2020 Materials: 5-channel video monitors, computers, iPads, cameras Description: This work uses a scene from Walter Hill’s 1979 cult movie The Warriors, which involves an an encounter between an all-female gang, the Lizzies, and three members of the Warriors […]

Categories: Art

Exhibition: Exhibited at International Center of Photography , New York City, January 23 – May 17, 2020 Materials: 2-channel video monitors, computers, iPads, cameras Description: This work uses an excerpt from Walter Hill’s 1979 cult movie The Warriors, as the remaining Warriors embark on the final stretch of their subway journey to Coney Island, and […]

Categories: Art

Exhibition: Exhibited at International Center of Photography , New York City, January 23 – May 17, 2020 Materials: 3-channel video projection, computers, iPads, cameras Description: “You’re standing right now with nine delegates from 100 gangs. And there’s over 100 more. That’s 20,000 hard-core members. Forty thousand, counting affiliates, and 20,000 more, not organized but ready […]

Categories: Art

Worker cage with screen that displays a multiple-choice personality test used by Cambridge Analytica to profile Facebook users, and by various corporations to evaluate potential and current employees.

Categories: Art

Crowdworkers are hired to upload a one-minute video recording their activities. The only requirements are that they only upload a maximum of one video per hour, and a clock be shown on camera.

Categories: Art

An AI algorithm analyzes and labels photographs used in a standard human empathy test. Each photograph’s metadata generates a machine-readable CAPTCHA matrix and a related query.

Categories: Art

Covers of pop songs about being ignored that currently have zero plays on SoundCloud are played on a Karaoke Machine inside a soundproof room.

Categories: Art

Crowdworkers are hired to upload videos of themselves engaging in a spiritual practice three times per day. The box collects donations that are used to commission more videos.

Categories: Art

Three virtual assistants programmed to laugh at random intervals.

Categories: Art, News

OUT OF SIGHT 115 South Jackson Street, Seattle August 3 – 27, 2017 http://www.outofsight.space Out of Sight – a survey of contemporary art in the Pacific Northwest, returns to Seattle for its third year. Tandem to the Seattle Art Fair, Out of Sight is the largest and most diverse annual exhibition of contemporary art in […]

Categories: Art
Watchtower

Commission: Commissioned by FACT Created with support from DXARTS. Original tower design by Paul Aiello. Exhibition: Exhibited at FACT, 88 Wood Street, Liverpool June 22 – October 1, 2017 Materials: Wood, monitors, computers, code Description: Watchtower is a four-storey wooden tower, modeled after the fire lookout towers found in the rural areas surrounding the artist’s […]

Categories: Art, News
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This exhibition is based on the collaboration with a network of scientists, journalists, activists, and artists in some twenty countries around the world, and in cooperation with expert organizations such as the German PEN Center, the Chaos Computer Club, Reporters Without Borders, and such platforms as netzpolitik. org, digitalcourage.de, WikiLeaks, and others. The exhibition’s aim is to expand public debate about the ever-present surveillance and censorship methods, which is an urgent priority not only due to constant new reports in the media, but especially because of the extensive obstruction of the investigation of these practices.

Categories: Art, News
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Aktionsart is pleased to present General Intellect, an exhibition of new work from James Coupe. Featuring a generative database of 3,000 videos produced by workers hired through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mTurk) service, this exhibition displays single and multi-channel video installations throughout an entire decaying school building in South Lake Union.

Categories: Art
General Intellect

A multi-channel video installation that generates narratives from video files produced by an online micro-labour force, via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service…

Categories: Art
Jalousie Room

Jalousie Room has three parts: a camera that meticulously and obsessively analyzes the street and buildings outside the gallery; a camera that is looking for a specific woman inside the main gallery; and a conversation that has previously taken place inside the room.