The One Best Way

The One Best Way is a mixed-media installation in four chapters. It examines the history, present, and possible future of monitoring and optimizing work. The first chapter revisits early 20th-century motion studies that captured human movement and translated it into models intended to define the one best way to perform specific tasks. Through this same lens, the second chapter analyzes film footage of Andy Warhol’s movements while eating a hamburger. The third chapter turns to Digital Twin Factories, where work is simulated and processes are monitored and optimized through endless virtual repetitions. Here, the simulation itself becomes the one best way. In the fourth chapter, a digital twin learns to eat a hamburger through machine learning algorithms. The installation reflects on how today’s machine learning systems inherit and transform the power once exercised on the factory floor, and where the limits of simulation lie.