Darcy Lange called his projects work studies. His work studies are long video observations of people working. Lange used the word work, and not labour, a term associated with the economic dimension of the activity, and politically more connotative. Instead, work refers to something more concrete, to the use of effort and action to achieve something. At the same time, work as the lowest common denominator for all activity, takes on a general, abstract quality. For its part, studying can be understood as the effort applied to understanding or knowing something. In artistic practice, a study also refers to the preparatory work prior to materialising the final piece of art.