Jenny Odell

[9][10] She graduated from UC Berkeley in 2008 with a degree in English Literature and received her MFA in Design + Technology from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010.

Odell's work consists of acts of close observations such as bird watching, collecting screenshots, or trying to parse bizarre forms of e-commerce.

[14] Odell has described where this approach comes from,I often say that medium is context [...] Part of the reason I work this way is because I find existing things infinitely more interesting than anything I could possibly make.

The archive is accessible online and much of the content is pulled from the internet, such as Google street views of manufacturing plants and videos of commercials for products.

[18] In her own words,The reconfiguration of this material highlights the ways in which such imagery, viewed in hindsight, inadvertently portrays some of the stranger and more sinister aspects that technology eventually came to embody.

"[24] In the end, the book is a criticism of capitalism, an argument against our standard definitions of productivity and an encouragement to re-engage with nature and local communities.