A slow day of unsuccessful problem-solving, so instead of describing sitting and staring at computers I started thinking about the nature of the project.

The problem with engaging in any type of technology-driven pursuit is that there is a temptation to become so infatuated with the process that the content of what is being produced is neglected. Having completed portraits of each of our four key figures, with each improvement in technology leading to ever-more presentable results, we then came upon a dearth of content. What should we use this technology to produce?

In the theoretical framework of New Fordism, content is almost entirely neglected. Simply producing above the sensible limit of supply and demand is enough. Yet, if New Fordism can really be a way of re-articulating Adornian ideas of autonomy by militarizing the nature of the market against itself, do we not have to buy into Adorno's own theorizing about the chasm between high and low culture?

It has been pointed out that the current project, with its audience-participatory nature, simplistic processes of production and religious undertones, owes more to the Arts & Crafts movement than the factory floor. This is true to some extent, and it seems that the main thing that separates our work from that of the Arts & Crafts movement is an unwillingness to embrace aesthetic kitsch - in other words, we differ at the level of content.

When considering the progress that has been made in the development of the painting software, it is clear to see a stylistic coherence arising, what Droppe would refer to as "manufacturing style". The limitations imposed by the small amounts of time given to complete a brush stroke and the specific nature of the way that the program analyzes and re-constructs the painting leave their mark at a stylistic level. The computer builds the nature of its analysis into the style, which is then modulated by the human-as-random-number-generator, their unconditioned responses re-shaping the stylistic output. When faced with a fast-flashing mark upon which they must put their paint brush, ever aware of its transient and unpredictable nature, the painter resorts to the basic muscle memory and motor co-ordination - hesitancy and finesse are over-ridden in the scramble to execute the action, and the quantized and striated nature of the computer's pixellized view of the image is re-configured and re-projected as a curved line through straight space.

This answers a key question related to New Fordism - why not just get the computer to do everything, to create the ultimate level of surplus value, to truly eliminate inefficiency? The answer is that the very nature of the human as a mediator between the computer and the world allows the introduction of a level of complexity unimaginable for the computer alone. Just as when one uses a computer as a way of interacting with the digital realm of the internet, the software used moulds the nature of the experience and our interaction with the digital world, here the human acts as the mouthpiece for the computer's impulses. Just as in the film Men In Black, where the alien roach's wearing of the farmers skin results in the weird gait and bizarre locutions of the not-quite-human, here the performer - the worker - is, as in Ford's factories, an interchangeable part of a machine - yet their presence on the factory flaw is not a mark of inefficiency, but of a higher level of complexity being introduced into the system.

Once again, I paraphrase Droppe - we are not making cars, but art - if one takes Benjamin at his word, could this process be a way of manufacturing "aura"? Removing the transcendentalist connotations of the word, we could posit that this nature imbued into the work of art could come from the addition of a complexity provided by human agency, however restricted. Here we have a bespoke art, but one that still attempts to position itself into the world of mass-production.

On a cross-channel ferry recently I purchased some crisps (or potato chips, as some are wont to call them). The package stated their handmade credentials and the family nature of the farm from which the potatoes were harvested, yet on the back of the packet the ingredients were listed in 11 different languages, implying that, either their ambitions far outstripped the ability of this small, localized concern to produce a quantity of chips suitable for global distribution, or (more likely) that the "handmade" nature in which the crisps were made was a highly regimented process in a much larger system of automation which dwarfed the cutesy, family image they were trying to portray.

The idea of the "bespoke" is one that seems to be gaining a certain amount of traction recently, and perhaps this is the result of a collective investment in the "aurafication" of mass-produced products, by using humans to modulate their automatized nature, or maybe, it is a similarly wide-spread confusion about the relationship between quality and the mass-production process.

Mass-produced products do not have to be bad quality - the proliferation of bad quality, mass-produced products has more to do with the fact that they are normally implemented by managers who have an interest in profits that far outstrips their interest in the products themselves. A primary concern with the automatization that we are attempting in these various artistic disciplines is that the results will be low-quality, which is not necessarily the case. This is not the 1970s, home computers are now sufficiently sophisticated to run complex algorithms that can be used to create high quality art - yet, of course, the quality of this art is determined by the complex relationship between form and content...

In terms of the painting software, its technical limitations seem to be implying a very specific and consistent set of what would constitute a usable image - but what if, as the software becomes more refined, that it suggests, nay demands, that the most effective fusion of content with its style is the content of kitsch? What then for the project? Do we simply become a more technologically advanced Arts & Crafts organization?