Kickended at Fotomuseum Winterthur, CH, 2018
Kickended at Fotomuseum Winterthur, CH, 2018
Kickended at Fotomuseum Winterthur, CH, 2018
Kickended at Fotomuseum Winterthur, CH, 2018
Kickended is an archive of Kickstarter’s $0-pledged campaigns. Kickended is the place where campaigns with no backers live a second life. Free from the pressure of money raising, these retain the purity of abstract ideas. Kickended uses data from kickspy.com.
By bringing to the fore crowdfunding projects with no backers, Kickended contributes to subvert the success bias produced at the level of both media storytelling and Kickstarter’s ranking algorithms. In this sense, it encourages a realistic perspective on the much hyped self-entrepreneurship. Kickended ignited a lively debate around these issues on major media outlets such as, among others, the Washington Post, the Guardian, CNET, Yahoo! Tech, and Buzzfeed.
Kickended performs an important service. It reminds us that what we see around us is not representative of the world; it is biased in systematic ways. Normally, when we talk of bias we think of a conscious ideological slant. But many biases are simple and unconscious. I have never read a media report or blog post about a typical, representative Kickstarter campaign – but I heard a lot about the Pebble watch, the Coolest cooler and potato salad. If I didn’t know better, I might form unrealistic expectations about what running a Kickstarter campaign might achieve. (Tim Harford, Financial Times)
Related: The Competitive Aesthetics of Failure at MoneyLab: Economies of Dissent, 3/12/2015.
Read an interview with me about Kickended by Nell Frizzell on The Guardian: Kickended: the enthralling world of crowdfunding flops