Project by Alexa Dannis
Everyday online gestures— scrolling, reacting, pausing— are captured and metabolized within self-devouring algorithms that preserve the illusion of agency while transforming the user physically, emotionally, and politically. This project defines digital body harvesting as the twofold cultivation and extraction of value from all online interaction, where participation itself becomes labor and micro-gestures sediment as automatic reflexes stored in the body. In platform capitalism, all activity— work, play, communication, intimacy— is routed through infrastructures that choreograph behavior and dissolve distinctions between office/home, labor/leisure, and public/private. The architecture translates these logics into spatial form, transforming subconscious habits into purposeful ritualistic choreography. A three-part sequence— fiber-optic rhizome network, self-selection corridor, and collective courtyard—materializes extraction, replaces algorithmic sorting with embodied choice, and converts hidden exchanges into reciprocal labor. The project stages attention, participation, and value-production– confronting the harvesting that choreographs behavior, automates feeling, and translates leisure into labor.
