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How to precut your own precut onions

 Following the culture of work through the evolution of the onion. Used to be abe to buy precut onion- I the human should not have to do the labor that a machine could do. I am human-creative automonous. Cant buy precut onions- rise of the idealisation of domestic labour (link to jermeny cobyn whos growing the tomatos) human prescence is valued. So what if all I needed to validate the shortcut of the precut onion was human prscnece. The wasing machine is the hour of time that I am gifted to do admin, bullshit labor. The washing machine will cut my onions which I watch it and crochet/be creative. But mechanical production. Its admin production. It’s the performance of labor. 

Using the onion as an object through which to observe the evolving culrure and relationship to domestic labor. 

rising do it yourself culture. 

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Who’s growing the tomatos

“I’m just asking the question, you're sitting in this high tech wonderful world where you’re watching screens, dot dot dot dot...everythings happening. Who’s growing the tomato’s?” 

“...no one” 

think it says a lot about the fears of losing what 

“I’m just asking the question, you're sitting in this high tech wonderful world where you’re watching screens, dot dot dot dot...everythings happening. Who’s cutting the onions?” 

How will we function if not with human labour? 

Fear of losing the wholesomeness through mechanised labour? 

Who is growing the tomatoes. W

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hm0yjFF9rQ 

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airport security- person watching over the machines working. 

supermarket- person watching over the machine working. (film?) 

ticket warden at a station. 

bowling ally. 

‘alright mate come on, you've got this. I know its been a long day but theres 2 hrs left on your shift and then you’re off.’ 

what if machines requires us to constantly give it encouragement. what if they needed eye contact and validation and incentives to work. 

imagine I have found myself in the future but the future is now. vloggin from the future. 

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post-work postman

post-work. letters/post? become a postman. likely to become automated. what will the postman do then? 

sending letters is effort. I wonder 

there will be no bullshit jobs. thinking is also automatable - algorithmic thinking.

15 hr work week,  

what if I could elongate bullshit job- eg. tying my shoelaces for 5minutes. way to feel active without achieving much. 

even film camera I think is marking a shift towards work. We want to work. 

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post-work

maybe its a speculative or critical reflection on the future of work. am I maybe caricaturing the perceptions that come with automated labour? That the only thing machines cannot replaces is art and thought. That the labour form that is replaced supposedly now goes unfilled. 

I think its about post-work. Maybe I am imagining a world where we are post work and the only work I have is to watch machines work to pass time? what is the human if not work. History of work. I think it redefines what it will mean to be human. it will change us from what it means to be an animal? maybe this is a new kind of bullshit job. 

‘the main building blocks of our work culture as 16th-century Protestantism, which saw effortful labour as leading to a good afterlife; 19th-century industrial capitalism, which required disciplined workers and driven entrepreneurs; and the 20th-century desires for consumer goods and self-fulfillment.‘

maybe the reason we don't want to read or play an instrument or learn a language is before is requires effort. And effort is work. Leisure is positioned in opposition to work therefore leisure does not involve effort. That is why the leisure we tend towards is passive. in a postwork society thought that will probably change. 

newly idealised domestic labour. cooking as a very trendy/hipster thing. takes time. We’ve got time. Growing veg/having an allotment. Craft brewing. DIY culture had has a resurgence- shift away from alienated labour towards autonomous consumption. people have time to make things. 

you have to buy freetime.

will we cut our own onions in a post-work society?  

As the number of jobs decrease, the performance of work still increases. Is me watching my machine a performance of work? is everything I do a performance of work. Admin as a performance of work. when there isn't 

The accusation is anticipated in the slogan coined by new media activist Aaron Bastani. ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’ is a provocative and maybe partly tongue-in-cheek phrase gaining traction as a means of summarising a future where most waged labour has been automated, everyone is sustained by UBI 

For Frayne, ‘shorter working hours would open up more space for political engagement, for cultural creation and appreciation, and for the development of a range of voluntary and self-defined activities outside work’ 

Our desires are never simply our own, and therefore work can never be driven simply by ‘our own desires’. If, as Srnicek and Williams demand, the Left is to rediscover itself as a force of utopian optimism, then the forms that desire might take when it is no longer stymied by alienated labour is a question we must continue addressing.

irginia Woolf argued that much of the intellectual potential of women has historically been stifled by the everyday household: ‘daughters of educated men have always done their thinking from hand to mouth […] They have thought while they stirred the pot, while they rocked the cradle’.For Leavis, intellectual creation and self-fulfilment are not to be abstracted from the tasks of ordinary life, but draw their strength precisely from them 

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2016/06/17/the-long-read-what-will-we-do-in-the-post-work-utopia-by-mareile-pfannebecker-and-j-a-smith/

performance of work as something that makes me feel like I am working but infact I am performing work. 

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Ages of Leisure, Alfred H. Lloyd

Unfortunately leisure is not always thought of in positive terms. Far too often is it thought of as only a cessation from work. Thus is it not just “impractical” but it is idle and futile; it butters no bread...it means only rest, careless diversion, often slumber. 

ages and era-not hours and days of leisure. 

3 eras of leisure: 

-childhood 

-domestic slavery 

-automatic machinery (the iron man) 

the greek word for scholarship was in its origin was association with or even identical with a word meaning leisure. 

Apparently men had to be themselves intimate parts of the machine, as the soldiers and servants are, before they could be set free from such restraint and become, as with our democracy and rising industrialism, the separate and independent users of machinery. 

it took so much more effort and skill to run the old fashioned kitchen stove than it takes to run the self-supplying, possibly self-lighting gas range of today. Now one man, taught in an hour or two in the shortened working day tends a machine which does work which even hundreds not many years ago could not do in a week or perhaps even a year. 

leisure with time to spend 

should it not be treated as the fourth “natural” right, earned at last? Earthly life, personal liberty, property and leisure! Leisure, not just to rest, but to do something perhaps pleasant and diverting, perhaps clture, the new  right of all! 

By what new education, by direct or indirect, may man be made fit for his new leisure?  

The past shows that with leisure has come culture. Culture, challenging establishment, seeking a new medium, has bred historic adventure, evolution.

In so many ways today both for work and for leisure we are living in a world of human products or activities with the human factor itself absent. 

So the new leisure of our era simply must be bringing its own specific culture, its own mutation of human values. What the new forms may be or how by education, of course a new education, the people at large may be brought to meet the new culture to their benefit instead of to their harm  

To take interest today only in quantity production and tradi tional accumulation, to value only the professional and occupa tional, only technique and efficiency, to be merely a conservative, complacent or aggressive, in politics or economics or social life or religion, to make use of one's leisure idly or wastefully, to have no active interest in what is impractical and adventurous, is doubtless to add to one's chances of getting rich: but also it is to fall behind the history, which by dint of the challenge of the Iron Giant is now in the making, and is so to lose, except as a slave, any place or part in the real life of the time.

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The philosopher, Bertrand Russell, claimed that "to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilisation"

As technology encroaches more and more on our personal lives and blurs the lines between work and pleasure, we’re beginning to see just how fine the boundary is between abundance and scarcity. Just like one stroke of a paintbrush can be the difference between a masterpiece and a mess, one wrong move, step too far, or passive decision, could be the difference between being a slave to technology or its master.

Perhaps this is why Keynes described living as an “art”; every form of art, skill, sport, game, or any other mode of leisure, has no other purpose than the act of doing it itself. Rather than completing a task for the purpose of a future outcome, our actions should be seen more as artistic expressions, concerned only with their own quality and immediate effects on others and the environment around them.

To end in Keynes’s words, “it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.”

https://www.connected-uk.com/welcome-to-the-real-age-of-leisure-and-abundance/

John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren

Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well

Yet there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy. It is a fearful problem for the ordinary person, with no special talents, to occupy himself, especially if he no longer has roots in the soil or in custom or in the beloved conventions of a traditional society.

We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich today, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible

For purposiveness means that we are more concerned with the remote future results of our actions than with their own quality or their immediate effects on our own environment. The “purposive” man is always trying to secure a spurious and delusive immortality for his acts by pushing his interest in them forward into time.He does not love his cat, but his cat’s kittens; nor, in truth, the kittens, but only the kittens’ kittens, and so on forward forever to the end of cat-dom. For him jam is not jam unless it is a case of jam to-morrow and never jam today.

We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin

But it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes.

https://www.executiveshift.org.uk/images/site_graphics/downloads/John_Maynard_Keynes.pdf

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self checkots

Rather than using the store windows to show off merchandise, Amazon has put the employees that do work there – as sales associates and cooks – on display. Imagine Macy’s Christmas window decorations – but instead of seeing a magical winter wonderland, passersby look into an employee break area, with its industrial furniture and government-mandated notices.

Advertisement

The message seems clear: don’t worry, people are still employed here.

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First Cycle 03.04.19

The first 36 minutes of our collaboration. I think we are both still getting used to eachother- figuring out how the other works. But by the end I found myself not wanting the lock to run out! Always a good sign. I felt like there was a lot more to explore and im excited for our next session. Feel like creatively we have a lot of offer eachother and I have high hopes that this partnership. There were a few blank pauses- I wasn't sure whether to break the silence or not but it seemed to be followed by a natural progression in activity. 

I was thinking that the whole fear around machines taking away jobs seemed to be remedied by the claim that the machine cant be creative- that is the humans job. Maye then it is fitting that i am using this period of interaction with my machine as a time to manifest creative output. I guess I will use this time to do the thing that i am told makes me more human than this machine. I like the sound it makes. Throughout its cycle it changes pitch and volume- I think it effects the energy of the work I start o create eg. more chaotic or calm depending on what I am listening to. In this way the machine informs the output of what I create. I found that I gravitated towards lots of circles I guess the form of the washing machine would inspire that. I enjoyed the cutting up of words and creating phrases with them. I wonder if we will reach a point where the sessions become about developing a larger thing rather than little sketches. Everytime we meet we continue to work on a big project. We shall see. I am not sure of the time frame and schedule of this collaboration. I want to do this everyday but I don’t think the washing machines schedule will allow for that. Being the only person in the house at the moment it’s a bit short on work and I don’t want to run a cycle for the sake of it. But I admit I look forwards to our next encounter. It felt like a relief stage where I tried to become more automatic. I suppose that’s another way the machine inspires me. As it whirls on repeat I feel also compelled to keep up with its mechanical persistence. It would be unfair of me to take a break if its working away! This is a partnership afterall. But there were a few points where it stopped and I too looked up to inspect the reason for this ceasing. But I guess they’re just pockets of unused time. Looks like we all have them. It felt very comforting. I wonder if I should aim to develop similar relationships with my other appliances. For example the drier? The clothes do need to be dried afterall. But for some reason I don’t feel the same affinity forwards it. It doesn’t inspire me the same way. So I think for now I wont. But if in the future I feel drawn towards it or need some extra creative time maybe I will seep into drying time.  

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creative collaboration

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzMXF_POak4

If my machines are freeing up time that I fill with work anyway then maybe I can get my machines to do that work too. Like thinking and making and design work. What if I can go into creative collaboration with my machines to alleviate me from my work. What if my washing machine could craft instead of me. wasted time is only such because it is framed as a duality to productive time. but what if I never produce then there is nothing to position against. Maybe this is just a - machines are taking our jobs - project though. But its not about machine intelligence. Maybe im still the intelligence. 

Alternatively I could spend that time with my washing machine. write to it, write about it, move with it. if its doing my work for me then I don't need to do that work so I can spend time with it. or I create work about my washing machine. 

routine/chores

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Washing machine

so the instructional piece already exists. Its essentially doing exactly what I want to do already- intructing people to not work in these when the machine is working. Use it as free time not just extra time. What kind of play? Is it a time of productivity. Maybe crocheting in that hour. 

so the idea Is that turning on these objects triggered a series of text messages. Instructions from that object. (inspired by the hello lamppost) so the washing machine on a 1hr cycle might text you a set of instructions for activities it wants you to do. eg how many pompoms can you make in an hr. pointless and unproductive activities that maybe are materially unproductive? or they should be materially prodctive to talk about immaterial labour? but maybe that is not my point. Its about how physical labour legitimises time whereas immaterial labour doesn't always get the same kind of gratification. so maybe it should be invisible productivity. or maybe at first you think the washing machine is helping you make something productive but actually its nonsense. its tricking you. similarly the kettle in the eg. 30 secs its going for will text you something. it assumes that you always have your phone on you though. I wonder if it could print something instead. print little notes. or they are all rolled up inside and don't eject until the washing machine is running. I prefer the tactility. its like the little slips you get at the.. I wonder  if they should link up to something bigger. be connected to other washing machines. create some kind of network or a network be feeding into it. or maybe that's not the point. these are solo moments. I wonder how that would work at traffic lights- not everyone waiting can grab a slip- too busy and public. I feel like in times like that a text would be better. the lamppost automatically sends you a message but its about the other people also waiting with you. turns waiting into a social activity. but I wonder what info they can disclose via text to another phone. or maybe its like ‘make eye contact with someone waiting on the other side of the street. this person is your sisters best friends mum.’  

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Welcome back.....

I watched In Time last night. Good crack. And here is my review/how does it relate to my project. 

scene: ‘do you have second?’ then he replies with fine and gives her a minute. Paying for stuff with time and not money. I suppose im interested in doing the opposite and paying with things with labour. I guess then everyone would just work to create these objects- its like bullshit work. eg. exchanging a coffee for 2 pompoms. I wonder then do the people make these? Cause then surely we can just make money. Maybe its not about money then but about time. Measuring time by these crafted objects. like physical time banking. time is thus crafted and commodified. time is inherently productive because time is a product. so maybe I am producing time but I need to figure out the networks around this. how do we obtain these crafted objects? Maybe we can only obtain them from wasted time. Thus we need to waste time to get more time. Pompoms are only produced in moments of waste. it then stores up those wasted minutes so that we can collect them and cash them in later to do things we don't want to do eg. talk to the sales rep on the street. Can either give him my actual time or exchange him some stored time. in this way from waiting at the lights for 1 min and collecting a pompom I can now be freed from a minute by cashing it in. So do we physically make it or do the systems around us automatically make them? It needs to be thought that it cant happen all the time- only in wasted time. Eg. at the traffic lights maybe its triggered by the button. Or on the toilet it requires to activate something. It can be manual but also it needs to be bespoke to that environment. these environments thus catalyse the production of extra time, crafting has the effect of storing it up, instead of wasting it. 

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Finite- A resource that does not renew itself at a sufficient rate for sustainable economic extraction in meaningful human time-frames. But the ability to understand you’ll never get that time back creates a great framework to make decisions on in all aspects of life. 

each person has a finite amount of time. 

we cant manufacture more time. we only get 24 everyday. 

you cant get back time that you didn't spend. so spend it all. 

timefulness - a concept of self help? Me presenting a new book ive written. 

currency of life is money. is it speculative? or am I actually proposing it. 

productivity: the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input.

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Tutorial

the good- recycling the same action so that you don't have to do anything extra but the same activity generates an extra part of production. eg. the toothbrushing. What other things like that can I do? 

the bad- ‘catching up’ on wasted time. the interesting part isn't actually logging wasted time to find out home much of it I have. the interesting part Is when the wasted activity can be subverted. 

to consider-presentation!!! Does it matter that all these objects are totally useless? A pompom…? Do I want to change it so that production element is useful? Or maybe the point is that trying to fill all your wasted time is useless. 

design a speculative system to process all these objects. 

look back into recycling time/recycling plants. the first step of recycling is collection-so maybe this is just the first step. A way of collecting. After collection the wasted materials are sent to a recovery facility to be sorted, cleaned and processed into materials that can be used in manufacturing. Recyclables are bought and sold just like raw materials would be. Stock market for wasted time? What if people could go online and buy wasted time. Wasted time then becomes a commodity. 

a logo that companies can put on their products that show that its made from recycled time. 

start presentation with a time lapse of new cross road- count up every time someone waits to cross- give a figure at the end of how much wasted time. What if we could harness this wasted time. conference? Pitch? make lots of graphs. 

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Making an un‘productive’ activity productive. With practise this could become a more slick process-paradox lies in that practise takes time. And adding this extra activity makes its take longer. Therefore in my efforts to save time Im actually wasting it. In my efforts to cross roads faster I end up happily waiting for the next round of green lights instead of running for them because it adds more crafting time aka its more productive. But am I being driven by the same compulsion for productivity? Is this only perpetuating it? 

 ​#tags

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Crafting Data

Is it productive to always record your time if you do nothing with it? What use is the data? What can It be used for? Can the data produced be both informative and a form of production. Productivity=production? When infographics become desirable...Its a visualisation of data. How can I craft data?