AMAZING INDUSTRIES

towards a more just and inclusive economy

Recent Projects

Guggenheim Union Rally, October 3, New York City. Photo: Brett Wallace

Guggenheim Union Rally

“On October 3, as the Guggenheim Museum reopened to the general public after being closed for months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum’s union held a rally protesting the museum’s continued failure to secure a contract with its workers.” – Dan Schindel, Hyperallergic. October 15th, 2020.

Guggenheim Union Rally, video, 4 min., 38 sec., 2020. Filmed and edited by Brett Wallace.

Defund NYPD

Trigger warning: this video contains images of violence by the NYPD.

A short video covering various Black Lives Matter protests in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York in early June 2020. This work was created in solidarity with victims of police violence, the calls to defund police, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Defund NYPD, video, 4 min., 19 sec., 2020. Filmed and edited by Brett Wallace.

No Layoffs in New York

A short video about the ongoing fight against layoffs of New York City essential workers.

No layoffs in New York, video, 4 min., 56 sec., 2020. Filmed and edited by Brett Wallace.

Published on Marx21. “City workers demand no layoffs in New York”, September 22nd, 2020.

Uber strike

 An observational video documenting the experiences of Uber drivers and delivery riders leading up to the company’s IPO on May 10th, 2019. The video contrasts Uber’s $82 billion IPO and market presence with footage from Uber drivers and riders protesting and criticizing the company for its low wages and lack of benefits

Uber strike, video, 8 min., 37 sec., 2020. Filmed and edited by Brett Wallace. Additional filming by Maral Satari.

Exhibited at the Platform Cooperative Consortium, New School, New York. November 7-9th. 2019.

Amazon HQ2

 An observational video of the protests and city council hearings on the proposal to bring Amazon’s HQ2 to Long Island City. New York City offered Amazon $3 billion in incentives to Amazon, despite the protests of many citizens.

HQ2, video, 60-minute selection, 2019. Filmed by Brett Wallace. Edited by Brett Wallace and Maral Satari.

Exhibited in Working Conditions, NURTUREart Gallery. March 16–April 14, 2019.

Universal Basic Income

A video on the future of work and trends like universal basic income narrated by Amazon speech bots: Ivy, Joanna, Kendra, Kimberly, Sally, Joey, Justin, Matthew.

Universal Basic Income, video, 4 min., 20 sec, 2019. Produced, written, filmed and edited by Brett Wallace.

Exhibited in Working Conditions, NURTUREart Gallery. March 16–April 14, 2019.

AMAZING INDUSTRIES Floating Factory

This video is a tour through an imagined social factory that floats in the sky. It is the ultimate manifestation of capital and the Internet. Viewers listen to a narrator whisk them through a factory of the future with drones, mechanical dogs and floating orbs

Amazon has a patent ( (Patent #US9305280B1) for an “Airborne Fulfillment Center.” Reading through this patent triggered the idea behind the video, “Floating Factory.” I see Amazon as Fordism on steroids, an accelerated model of human structure and repetition. In Amazon factories, workers sprint down aisles picking hundreds of goods ordered online off the shelves per hour. Workers become cast as “conscious linkages” within a much larger machine, as Marx writes in the Grundrisse.  Amazon fulfillment centers, and their vision to fly them over cities,  is a manifestation of the hyper accumulation of wealth that capitalism demands. Jeff Bezos makes almost $4,000 per minute while Amazon feeds its rapacious appetite for more growth and profit off the back of low-wage labor power. Brett Wallace

Brett Wallace, AMAZING INDUSTRIES Floating Factory, video, 4 min., 44 sec, 2018. Written, produced and directed by Brett Wallace. VR development: Pariah Interactive /Prashast Thapan.

Exhibited in Working Conditions, NURTUREart Gallery. March 16–April 14, 2019. Screened at HOT Steam III.

Mechanical Turk Workers

A plays a video of Mechanical Turk workers, an invisible labor force on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform, discussing their work. Workers were paid $2.00 for each 2 minute video submitted over Amazon’s platform as a work task. A second video shows work tasks, such as identifying images, which an artificial intelligence program could not do without human assistance.

Mechanical Turk Workers, video, 2 hrs., 36 mins., 07 sec., 2018.

Exhibited in Working Conditions, NURTUREart Gallery. March 16–April 14, 2019.

Mechanical Turk Workstation, 2019. Photo: Nicholas Knight.
Detail: Mechanical Turk Workstation, 2019. Photo: Nicholas Knight.

Inside the Automaton of Amazon Mechanical Turk

Download booklet

Amazon Mechanical Turk is an online crowdsourcing marketplace founded by Amazon in 2005. The service, described as “artificial artificial intelligence”, provides micro-work in the form of atomized tasks that humans can perform better than computers.

Research, photographs, and stories sourced from Mechanical Turk Workers and gathered on mTurk.com, 2017-18.

Wallace, Brett, “Inside the Automaton of Mechanical Turk”, web, December 28th, 2017.