Jonny Scholes
ArtMinr

ArtMinr is framed in a speculative future of 2031 after ‘The Great Enumeration’, an artwork event that drastically changed how art was valued in society.

The installation explores the future of labour, the commodification of culture, the extractive nature of digital capitalism, and the increasing value placed on momentary uniqueness and rarity.

The year is 2031.

As one of millions of out-of-work artists, you have found work in a texture mine. Located at old landfill sites, texture mines dig up rubbish and have workers sift for patterns that are yet to appear on the Internet. Here you make use of your aesthetic and cultural intuition to make visual collages of materials or objects from decades past.

These collages are streamed to high-paying influencers all over the world, who have turned to real-time generated neo-abstract textures as a way to stand out. By creating abstract collages from materials that were never uploaded to the internet, the mine can offer customers a moment of online originality before the work is ingested into The Great Enumeration.

The Great Enumeration was a significant event in 2027 when artist Hilma Dowland unveiled their work Everything Was/Is. Hilma used Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to ingest all documented artworks, integrated a knowledge graph of all known historical events and then enumerated all possible drawings, paintings, sculptures, tapestries, murals and digital artworks that could ever exist.

Hilma partnered with Swedish-based start-up ArtGround to make all these works available through their on-demand fabrication technology. The platform was later acquired by a multinational retail giant and made available in all countries as a subscription service, which led to a collapse in artwork sales created by living artists.

As the consequences of Hilma Dowland’s work Everything Was/Is usurped their intent, the event was given the name The Great Enumeration by the world at large.

ArtMinr is a participatory installation that acts as a catalyst, directing our attention to digital trends and online-offline societal challenges. Through the labour of making – ArtMinr prompts us to consider the types of systems and ecologies we desire, and the potential routes we might already be treading.

Credits

Artist: Jonny Scholes