Xtine Burrough

xtine is a new media artist and educator. She has authored or edited several books including Foundations of Digital Art and Design (2013), Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and Design (2011), and The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies (2015). She has co-authored other works and contributed chapters and articles to anthologies and scholarly journals. Informed by the history of conceptual art, she uses social networking, databases, search engines, blogs, and applications in combination with popular sites like Facebook, YouTube, or Mechanical Turk, to create web communities promoting interpretation and autonomy.

xtine is passionate about creating works using digital tools to translate common experiences into personal arenas for discovery. She is a Webby Honoree, has received a Terminal commission and an award from the UK Big Lottery fund. An Associate Professor of Emerging Media at UT Dallas, she bridges the gap between histories, theories, and production in new media education.

Remediation in Digital Labor is an ongoing collaboration with Turkers (mTurk.com virtual laborers) for a critical and poetic understanding of the self as virtual employee or employer. I have hired the Turkers to pause from physical labor, to respond to the Federal Trade Commission’s workshop about the sharing economy, and to imagine their dream-platform for virtual labor. I am interested in collecting the Turkers’ thoughts, but I am also hopeful that by hiring the workers to share thoughts about their role in mTurk I am encouraging self- and system-awareness in this digital laborer community. In this presentation I will share my findings with the Turkers, from the mundane to the unexpected. My role as a virtual employer, and curiouspurveyor of digital culture, will also be part of the conversation.