This Much I'm Worth

This Much I'm Worth (The self-evaluating artwork)  |  2017 
83 pieces of neon,  recycled server room equipment, electronics, computers, IP Cameras, Programming
​420 cm x  160 cm x 90 cm ( 165"x 63"x 45"):  Weight approx 400 KG

“This much I’m worth [The self-evaluating Artwork]” is a digital art piece that continually displays its sale value through a series of complex algorithms called "the endorsers".   It is constructed with materials that have a history loaded with association. Implicated in the history of neon is its use in the sex trade, its cultural significance today is more commonly a trope of contemporary art.  It is both a functional object and spectacle seeking to question values, worth and algorithmic bias.​

Summary

  • The artwork displays its sales value [GBP]  that is calculated nightly offline by complex algorithms called "the endorsers"
  • The endorsers study social media, pricing sites and many other resources including the financial markets.  They apply adjustments to the calculated price based on the provenance, gender, race and sexuality of the artist.  #algorithmic_bias
  • Within the gallery the artwork price fluctuates through lives streams to social media and responding to audience behaviour.  #thismuchimworth #rachelara
  • The artwork monitors the audience via 2 IP Cameras and collates the data on the internet of things.
  • ​This work was hand built and programmed entirely by women (myself and the Neon Blower (Julie Bickerstaff @ NeonUnity),  referencing industries where women are often excluded.
Image of the artist in her studio hand building the work.

Background

This work was completed and installed in Anise Gallery, London SE1 as part of a show called "Controlled Realities" in 2017  It's the full scale version of the award winning sculpture "This Much I'm Worth [A Self Evaluating Artwork][Prototype]" that won the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2016.

The sculpture is over 4 meters long and  2 meters high, substantially increasing the scale of the prototype bringing into play issues such as scale and spectacle into the equation.

This version has substituted sensors for IP cameras, replaced Nixie tubes with full Neon Tubes (84 Pieces in Total) and employing recycled server room equipment to create a home made animation system for the neon.​
Image Above:  First  studio tests of the Neon Nixie Cage (pre blackout paint)
EVA 2017 Conference Paper on the Making of this work entitled "The Making of a Digital (Master)Piece"

​Interview for Aesthetica Anthology:
This Much I'm Worth:
​A postidigital critique of value 

Rachel Ara’s This Much I'm Worth is a sculpture that displays its own value. The work expertly combines analogue and digital technologies to quantify deposits of cultural, social and symbolic capital, converting them into a single number - a price that indicates the total amount of financial capital contained within the work at any given time. This Much I'm Worth flaunts its commodity status to address the way that value is bestowed in the art world. It also challenges our unconditional reliance on digital technologies by usurping their legitimising authority, and questions our romance with machines by fetishising technology.

SK: How does This Much I'm Worth calculate the price that it displays and what factors cause it to fluctuate?

RA: The value fluctuates about 2% either way of the daily core value in the gallery. If motion sensors don’t detect movement the value will slowly drop, if someone approaches, the value may increase. People are intrigued by how it works or if they can affect the price. Why should I divulge how the core price is arrived at? I’m never party to the way political systems work, or why bankers are paid so much.  Basically, a group of algorithms, the endorsers, run nightly and interrogate different variants that affect the value. One endorser interrogates the effect that gender has on the value, another sexuality, another racial profile, etc. Other endorsers will interrogate the “chatter” on social media about the artist or the work. Some value is derived from the work’s exhibition history. Some will be aligned with inflation and the stock market. The initial value is derived from material costs and labour. Of course the endorsers can never be truly comprehensive – and even they are imbued with prejudice handed down by the developer. How can you interrogate areas that you have never experienced or are unaware of? Do the endorsers even have to exist for the artwork to work? 

SK: That’s a good question, would people still believe in it? Do we really understand algorithms or other abstract processes, if we don't understand how they work? But it strikes me that this is exactly how legitimacy is bestowed in the art world. Are there qualitative differences between the different variables?

RA: I suppose for the moment they’re weighted fairly evenly. But the art will be in balancing them over time. How much value does social media account for now? Certain things, like winning the Aesthetica counts for a lot. That’s given me increased provenance and mentions on social media.  It’s a matter of how much you’re going to drill down, because how much authority does the one who is tweeting have? It’s so complex and layered, the way the algorithms work, it’s like the banking system. But there is never an answer, it’s just playing with numbers and assumptions. But because it’s so complicated, and it’s coding, people trust that it’s doing the right thing. People trust these systems, or they trust you. And that’s worrying.

SK: We similarly trust the authority of the market. But This Much I'm Worth challenges the conventional idea that the “market decides”. It reveals that the market never actually makes any decisions, the market is always in motion. The measuring apparatus makes these decisions by objectifying and quantifying the activity of the market. At the same time, This Much I'm Worth has a material existence, we can believe in it. So the work reflects the market but it’s also a proxy for the market, because it has the authority to set the price. No one is going to challenge it. This switching back and forth between transparency and obscurity, abstract circulation and material trace, fetishism and embodiment is visible in the work’s construction as well. It is hung relatively high on the wall like an altar, a cruciform black armature supporting a series of Nixie tubes framed in a red neon arrow. What factors came into play when you were developing the physical appearance of the work?

RA: I suppose the starting point was the decision to use Nixie lights, which were used in old calculating machines of the 1950s. After that decision it became relative. I used red neon to hark to the sex trade, referring to values placed on women. The large red arrow pointing to the model down below puts a price on the woman’s head. I investigated the construction of external neon signs, and used that as a basis. The black box that contains the electronics is a more obvious reference. The work looks like a found object but every part was considered and then built. I like the fact that all the components came from all over the world, because this devaluing of women is a universal problem. The transformers came from America, the Nixies came from the Ukraine, a lot of the electronics came from China, and the frames were fabricated in the UK.  So it’s quite an international piece.

SK: You’re making a new version, with neon digits this time. Why did you create a larger version and how was the process of building it different to the prototype?

RA: The new piece is on a much larger scale because people expect a spectacle, and I suppose in a sense I am giving it to them. It’s about being taken seriously, creating an impact and a reference to the machismo of the large scale sculpture, responding to the art institution’s desire. I wanted to see if its size would create more chatter on the internet, for the algorithms to pick up and increase the price. I couldn’t physically build the neon, so I had to outsource. I only wanted women experts to work on it, for me that was a crucial part of the work. It was really hard to find an engineer, and I couldn’t. It was quite upsetting because of the amount of abuse that I was receiving on forums because I specifically wanted a woman engineer. So I taught myself to do it. The algorithms need to be continually enhanced and I thought it would be interesting to get women from different cultural backgrounds to help. That would make a difference, how women view things differently from different cultures.

SK: How easy is it for women to access technology, digital or otherwise?

RA: Using the internet, I’ve taught myself CAD, electronics, electrical installation, welding and all the other skills necessary to build the work. My friends can deliver a baby, they can give a lecture but I don’t have friends that can do electrical installation. It’s difficult to approach a bloke because you get berated or undermined and it takes a lot of energy to ask. Maybe that’s why I feel it’s really important for me to make the work, or to draw the plans if I have something made, so that I am not discredited in terms of skill. I need that solidness, that I actually made the work. Because they’re very quick to undermine women, and say “you didn’t fabricate this yourself”. I think the internet is brilliant for women, because it’s really empowering, if you want to learn.

SK: We were talking about people’s faith in technology, but equally there’s also a lot of scepticism, especially when it breaks down. In a recent interview, Phillip Parreno said that he enjoys the slapstick element when the technology breaks down and it’s not clear if the work is functioning properly, because it is more “human-like”. Does the work sometimes only function when it breaks down?

RA: When I was building the cages for the stacked neon digits, I noticed that if I placed the neon pieces too close I get this wonderful electrical interference that temporarily distorts the reading. I thought this was quite poignant, as a small error in coding can often led to significant consequences. These are the nuances that you experience and discover when you build your own work, as opposed to commissioning makers to build it for you.

SK: You combine traditional sculpture techniques with digital technologies quite consistently. What drives your choice of materials and techniques?
​
RA: I’m surrounded by technology and I’m an artist practicing today so I use what’s around. I use it as a tool and material. I consistently employ new technologies, for example I used VR in Cocksure (is anything ever what it seems?)(2016), but I’m led by the subject matter, not the technology. Technologies are a progression of each other, so as a maker it’s natural for me to move on.

Biographies

Sophia Kosmaoglou 
Sophia Kosmaoglou is an artist, tutor, curator and founder of [ART&CRITIQUE], an alternative art education network based in London. Her work employs a broad range of practices including sculpture, installation, video, painting, performance, sound, site-specificity, collaboration and participation to address identity, convention, authority and rationalism. She has a practice-based PhD in Fine Art from Goldsmiths and her research interests include institutional critique and the relationship between art and politics, institutions and independent organisations and collective practices.
 
Rachel Ara 
Conceptual and data artist Rachel Ara graduated with a Fine Art BA from Goldsmiths College, London, where she won the prestigious Burston award. Winner of the Aesthetica Art Prize 2016 for This Much I’m Worth, the self-evaluating artwork.  Pulling on her experiences as a computer system designer, the digital sculpture draws on data and complex algorithms to calculate its own value in real time. Her work is nonconformist with a socio-political edge that often incorporates humour and irony with feminist & queer concerns. Ara has just been shortlisted for the forthcoming Lumen Prize for her work D.O.A.M IV (The Death of Ana Mendieta). She currently lives and works in London