Shepherd’s Office. The Politics of Digital Labor and Its Impact on the Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers

Abstract

Shepherd’s Office (SO) is a collaborative performance and research project between artists Daniela Vainio and Zaneta Zukalova, first introduced at Tate Modern (Tate Exchange) London in 2017, which questions the systematic order of Amazon Mechanical Turk. In May 2019, SO held a live investigative performance at the Art Fair Suomi in Helsinki, with an aim to collect the data that informs this article; SO’s focus was on the socio-political background of Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers and their personal relations to and opinions on the platform. The present article introduces both the artistic and investigative aspects of the project and the problematics of Amazon Mechanical Turk, and offers an insight into the research inputs, processes, and outcomes.