digital sweat

I recently watched Stephanie Rothenberg speak about her project doublehappinessjeans, a Second Life sweatshop that produces designer denim by the underpaid labor of virtual avatars; producing the goods in both physical and digital form. The idea makes an intriguing point about the ideal of Personal Fabrication: that one day manufacturing of complex products will be conducted digitally, through digital fabrication machines, while only bits – design information – being transferred around the world. The original idea supposes that designs will still be centrally distributed while manufacturing will become clean and compact enough to happen anywhere. Doublehappinessjeans suggests that the sweatshop endures regardless of the sophistication of design or manufacturing: low-cost labor continues to be exploited, whether to design or fabricate real or virtual goods, either through ‘gold farming‘ or simply because design itself presupposes a dominant cultural position that relies on being exported.