A project by Joana Moll, 2019

The Hidden Life of an Amazon User reveals the hidden economic and environmental costs offloaded to, and unwittingly paid for, by the end-user. The Hidden Life of an Amazon User confronts us with the environmental footprint instigated by purchasing a book on Amazon.com: 87.33Mb of data is activated to navigate through 12 different interfaces—1307 different requests totaling 8724 pages of printed code—all used for continuously tracking customer behavior to amplify the monetization of the end-user and increase business revenues. To put it bluntly, the user is not just exploited by means of their free labor but is also forced to assume the energy costs of such exploitation.
The project includes three commissioned texts by Jussi Parikka, Jara Rocha and Christian Ulrik Andersen & Søren Bro Pold, available on the projects’ website.

Visit the project: https://www.janavirgin.com/AMZ/

This work was realized within the framework of the European Media Art Platforms EMARE program at IMPAKT with the support of the Creative Europe Culture Programme of the European Union.

Other works of Joana Mol

Virtual Watchers, 2016
AZ: Move and get shot, 2012
Texas Border, 2011

Image: Joana Mol, 2019