Instagram something with the intention of it being taken down by Instagram. Take a screenshot of it; keep a record of it. Instagram the screenshot. S… - Kenneth Goldsmith

W: You sound like that man on the Times who considers my paintings to be sociological commentary. I just happen to like ordinary things. When I paint them, I don’t try to make them extraordinary. I just try to paint them ordinary-ordinary. Sociological critics are waste makers.

This is the subject of an art work by the Brooklyn-based artist Andrew Norman Wilson called ScanOps. The project began in 2007, when Wilson was contracted by a video-production company to work on the Google campus. He noted sharp divisions between the workers; one group, known as ScanOps, were sequestered in their own building. These were data-entry workers, the people to whom those mysterious hands belonged. Wilson became intrigued by them, and began filming them walking to and from their ten-hour shifts in silence. He was able to capture a few minutes of footage before Google security busted him. In a letter to his boss explaining his motives, Wilson remarked that most of the ScanOps workers were people of color. He wrote, “I’m interested in issues of class, race and labor, and so out of general curiosity, I wanted to ask these workers about their jobs.” In short order, he was fired.

Your photo of the Eiffel Tower on Flickr is identically redundant to the millions already stored on Flickr, yet you keep on snapping them (just as I keep downloading MP3s).