Aaron Koblin: collective production

At this year's DLD, the thing that struck me most was the work of artist Aaron Koblin. His data animations were all over the place. What is beautiful of them is the way they use globalized capitalist activity to create collective artworks. Capitalism itself becomes the artist here, with its planes starting or the date sent out by the performance of Radiohead. His "Ten Thousand Cent" piece is Damien Hirst gone collective: Without knowing what they do, Thousands of people collectively draw a 100 dollar bill electronically.

An additional, very interesting insight this offers: The different modes of using the internet. Koblin, quite simply, pinpointed the amount of time users from different countries spent with the task of electronically drawing their part of the great work. People from the UK or Germany spent on average one or two minutes with it. People from Egypt, 31 minutes; from China, 23. There is a different relationship towards of internet activity here, and perhaps a different understanding of what a "task" is.