Mierle Laderman Ukeles Video Editor

Using a combination of software, an original system adds visual effects and reorganizes video footage of citywide maintenance gestures. Loosely following the tenets of Mierle Laderman Ukeles 1969 ranting Manifesto for Maintenance Art, the software attempts to translate the rules for performing in daily life into a collection of rules for a recombinant generative video editing system. This detournément results in a DIY lawlessness, predicting a post-democratic system where the absence of the state results in a peculiar high tech/low tech mingling of responsibility, technology, and artistic urbanism. An unlikely place where maintenance and algorithm co-create the moving image.

An experimental version of this app can be found here.