The Cowan Paradox

How much time do you actually spend on your household chores? And does technology help to make it less and easier? Artist Sjef van Beers, who likes to dismantle everyday digital interfaces in his work, went on an investigation. He incorporated the insights he gained into an installation with handheld scanners from the supermarket: The Cowan Paradox.

In the 1970s, Ruth Schwartz Cowan discovered that technological progress in the home hardly led to any time savings. And that still seems to be the case: where people spent around 26 hours a week on household chores around 1900, that is still 24 hours in 2005.

By taking the self-scanner as material, Van Beers exposes the dubious status of this form of ‘automation’. His installation zooms in on comparable innovations, from refrigerators to sewing machines, that have contributed to the shift from the domestic environment as a space in which people work to a space focused on consumption.