Data Commodification

Departing from the recent Commodify.us web application (an artist-run Internet startup
producing projects to help individuals capitalise on their online monetary potential) this presentation+workshop aims to put some of the server-side tools employed by the project back into users’ hands.

Participants will have the possibility to experiment with personal and/or open Facebook or Google+ profile datasets, quantify and visualise relational data and essentially establish a currency conversion of their online presence, potentially viable for further marketing or for use as creative material and critical reflection.

from Commodify.us:

Currently our online personal information, our friends, likes, stories and photos are sold without our knowledge or consent. If Facebook allows us to download our profile data, we should be able to have a space to upload it, and monetise this data ourselves. We should be able to commodify our immaterial labour.

"I created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to, and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment. That means that I sold my soul like a tennis shoe and I derived no
profit from the sale of my soul."
— Carmen Hermosillo aka humdog, 1994