With Every Fibre: Postmedia art and subverting job listings platforms

‘With Every Fibre’ is a digital intervention and postmedia artwork that begins by subverting job listings websites and advertising formats, then redirect participants to the decentralised web via peer-to-peer browser Beaker. Drawing upon the aesthetics of the deepsea fibreoptics that funnel our online communications, the work takes the format of a spoof job advert to recruit for the fictional role of ‘Connections Manager’. This advert then directs ‘applicants’ to a page on the decentralised internet, a structure that in itself challenges the centralised power of the mainstream web and its role in perpetuating social inequalities and consolidating existing hierarchies. The core topics that ‘With Every Fibre’ explores include the monetisation and commodification of social interactions, how these interactions are a form of digital labour that often goes unrecognised, and how the need for care, empathy and dialogue is increasingly needed to counter a dominant infrastructure that thrives off polarisation, social tensions and an economy of outrage.