Trimester 3, 2012

Data Factory

Description

Data Factory consist of an archive (website) of telephone conversations with direct marketing companies. In these calls I attempt to offer companies the main ingredient for their success - consumer data -, only that by "consumer" I mean "myself". Various reactions to this act of generosity can be witnessed, although I must warn you about their negative tone.

What began as a joke, seemed to be able to open a peephole into the ideology and methods in practice within direct marketing. Simply by circumventing the usual mediation and concealed processes through which consumer data is collected, and proposing to offer my data directly to the companies, part of this usually invisible world seemed to become more apparent.

The question that arises at this point is how to continue, where to go from here? The logical and easy way would be to include more recordings to the archive, which I intend to do. However, this option might not amount to much, it might turn out to be more of the same. Other strategies must be devised, so I can go beyond the negative reaction, and be able to captivate the interest of these companies, making it possible to establish a actual dialog with them. I see two possibilities for it:

a 'quantified self' strategy, whereby amassing an exhaustive amount and structured data on my daily activity, I am able to constitute a databank on myself that might trigger companies interest and have some monetary value.
develop a service where users can draw a detailed online profile of themselves, which can then be sold to direct marketing companies, as 'the real data profiles' of those made use of that service.

Project external website: http://andrecastro.info/data-factory/