NYU Skirball will present the world premiere of I Agree To The Terms, an interactive virtual event from the OBIE-winning The Builders Association, livestreaming for 12 performances, March 25 – April 3. Directed by Marianne Weems, I Agree To The Terms is being created in collaboration with a community of “MTurks” (Amazon Mechanical Turks) who train the algorithms that shape our online experience.

MTurks (or microworkers) earn from $1 to $100 a day in a vast, unregulated industry, executing assignments that are repetitive, boring, maddening, and sometimes disturbing. In this 45-minute online encounter, audiences will enter the “Builders Marketplace,” train with actual microworkers and compete for paying jobs while being timed, rated and ultimately paid (in virtual “Builders coin”).

The Internet, which was once seen as an innovation with the potential of bringing communities together, has become a largely isolating world, capitalizing our labor, our attention, and our identities. As the need for new survival strategies grows in an expanding global economy, I Agree To The Terms explores the daily terms we agree to through our online engagement, and what that agreement costs, not only to ourselves, but to the microworkers and society as a whole.

Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing website that enables businesses to hire remotely located microworkers to perform discrete on-demand tasks that computers are currently unable to do. It was the idea of Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, who believed a platform could be created to exploit the fact that humans can easily perform certain tasks that are used to train AI. He predicted there was a business to be built around connecting those who wanted research done with those who were willing to do it. By creating the Mechanical Turk marketplace, Bezos created a phenomenon he called “artificial artificial intelligence.”

Contributors to I Agree To The Terms include performer Moe Angelos (The Five Lesbian Brothers); performer David Pence (a Builders founding member); MTurk collaborators Michelle Brown, Noel Castle, Adah Deveaux, and Sybil Lanham; writer and dramaturg James Gibbs; sound design and original composition Dan Dobson (Blue Man Group); video designer Austin Switser; second screen producer/system design Lawrence Shea; interaction designer Giada Sun; associate director Nick Auer and stage manager Kristin Dwyer. Producer for The Builders is Morgan Lindsey Tachco. For more information, visit iagreetotheterms.com.

The Builders Association is an NYC-based, cross-media performance company. They use the richness of new and old tools to extend the boundaries of theater, telling original stories that examine the impact of media on various cultures and communities. Founded in 1994 by Marianne Weems, The Builders’ work is made by a core group of collaborators that includes Moe Angelos, Dan Dobson, James Gibbs, David Pence, Lawrence Shea, Austin Switser, and Jennifer Tipton, in addition to hundreds of collaborators across creative disciplines.
thebuildersassociation.org

ABOUT NYU SKIRBALL

NYU Skirball is NYC’s home for cutting-edge performance, artistic research, and discourse, holding close to James Baldwin’s dictum that “artists are here to disturb the peace.” NYU Skirball is located in the heart of Greenwich Village, historically a center of resistance, dissent, and free thinking. Its programming reflects this history and embraces today’s renegade artists and companies, presenting works that aim to engage, provoke, and inspire audiences.

In addition to performances and ancillary programs, NYU Skirball further bridges the academic and the broader world through public lectures, conversations, and symposia, bringing together students, audiences, and creative thinkers to unpack current issues and challenges. The year-long “COVID19 and its Afterlives” series considers the possibilities of the post-pandemic future through talks, discussions, and commissioned essays.