TY - JOUR
T1 - Before Us Is The Salesman’s House
T2 - Exploring the Contingent Aesthetic of eBay
AU - Rudrum, David
PY - 2019/7/25
Y1 - 2019/7/25
N2 - In 2012, data artist Jer Thorp and statistician Mark Hansen collaborated on an installation called Before Us Is The Salesman’s House. Commissioned by the eBay/PayPal corporation, and inspired by Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, this data art project has been described variously as “an investigation of eBay as a cultural artefact,” “a kind of fly-over of [eBay’s] rich data landscape,” and “a portrait of humanity in the purchases we make.” Based on big data from eBay and Project Gutenberg, it uses sheer random contingency to show the inter weavings of literary texts with everyday commodities. This essay seeks to read the challenging project that is Before Us Is The Salesman’s House variously as literary text, a piece of corporate art, an opening for social critique, and an example of Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics.
AB - In 2012, data artist Jer Thorp and statistician Mark Hansen collaborated on an installation called Before Us Is The Salesman’s House. Commissioned by the eBay/PayPal corporation, and inspired by Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, this data art project has been described variously as “an investigation of eBay as a cultural artefact,” “a kind of fly-over of [eBay’s] rich data landscape,” and “a portrait of humanity in the purchases we make.” Based on big data from eBay and Project Gutenberg, it uses sheer random contingency to show the inter weavings of literary texts with everyday commodities. This essay seeks to read the challenging project that is Before Us Is The Salesman’s House variously as literary text, a piece of corporate art, an opening for social critique, and an example of Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics.
KW - Relational aesthetics
KW - Jer Thorp
KW - Office for Creative Research
KW - Data Art
KW - Distant Reading
KW - Arthur Miller
KW - Death of a Salesman
KW - Before Us Is The Salesman's House
KW - Ebay
M3 - Article
VL - 11
SP - 88
EP - 106
JO - Synthesis: an Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies
JF - Synthesis: an Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies
SN - 1791-5155
ER -