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***** Highly Recommended
2021 -
07'04'' HD, stereo
***** Highly Recommended is constructed from collaborations with gig workers contacted through Upwork, a freelancing internet platform. Taking its name from the rating and feedback given to everyone involved in the project, the work utilises the online service as an extension of outsourced computer-generated imagery (CGI) production processes.
Mostly working from home, makers at each stage of the filmmaking process were commissioned to produce content based on their earliest memories. One screenwriter recalls the origins of their fear of the dark and another recalls coming face to face with a cobra in an Indian suburb. Elements of their scripts are narrated by voice actors who alternate between performance and recollections of their own early childhood experiences. A range of virtual scenes are constructed, developed, and combined from the first memories of 3D artists from across the world. Sound designers reconstruct their earliest recollections as soundscapes.
The respective memories of these individuals are edited together to produce a collective space and narrative. The individual worker becomes lost within this simultaneously intimate and remote process. Produced by part social and part financial algorithm, the resulting film is a study of the somatic and cultural factors normally concealed within remote CGI production, and an examination of an emerging economy that increasingly blurs the boundaries between personal and professional spaces and identities.