Human capital software solutions

Human Capital is a piece of voice [text.sound] composition software [packaged and potentially marketed as a training tool for use by India based tele-workers] that parodies the communication philosophies of the call centers, namely their concept of a generic globalised [market] identity. At the same time the software hopes to explore in its potential for text sound composition the telematic element of globalised performance / mental immigration undertaken by the agents themselves, in short the nature of the techno imaginary spaces such workers increasingly inhabit.

Essentially the software attempts to investigate [and invert] the logic of telematic communications structures when appropriated by capital. Commodified communication spaces, despite the all too familiar marketing rhetoric of utopian spaces wherein we all, whatever our nationality, connect, are in fact fundamentally homogeneous, spaces of cultural diffusion and not of cultural difference. Telematic capital innoculates and incorporates the other only to reduce it to the same. In other words, difference is neutralized and used productively. This is inherently antithetical to the potential of media to be machines of difference and of heterogeneity. It this logic that the software attempts to parody and invert, tactically, by proposing, though parody and composition, creative alternatives.

The production of subjectivity in the space of commodified communication essentially subverts notions of agency, independent action, or singularity [guattari], replacing them with generic behavioral patterns // model identities. The proposed software therefore hopes to actually open up space for subjective experimentation, or perhaps play with singularity, by allowing for processes which might frustrate // subvert the mechanisms of modelization and homogenity. Users will be able to construct, from a library of stock phrases // words // and adopted identities, responses to potential client queries. Tele-workers might then potentially be able to re-appropriate // mutate possible identities, disconnecting from capital. Dragging text sound clips onto a timeline, much like conventional music software, the software hopes to introduce the potential for mixing // morphing // and mutation within an otherwise mono environment, opening up fissures in pattern subjectivity

The possibility of being multiple and heterogeneous as opposed to being straight-jacketed by commodified forms of subjectivity seems more akin to Appadurais notion of imagination. Imagination comes to play a central role in the post_electronic world in practices of everyday life. Telematic connections mean that we can all participate in mediated imaginaries that transcend national space. This might be a positive side to an increasingly globalised world, a space for play and expression, mobilization versus closed cultural categories. The software hopes to illuminate this possibility but yet is twofold in structure. Even though its creates a space for play, potential fissures are still within the confines of a structured software environment. As a training tool for call centers the software is imbued with an apposite rigidity that at times frustrates // condescends thereby [hopefully!] opening up space for political awareness and or motivation. Ie this sucks but I can fuck with it. There are conceivable alternatives.

Artist credits: Beatrice Gibson, Sejal Chad and Adrian Ward [Programming]