The Intergalactic Estate Agency is a participatory installation commissioned by the Eden project in collaboration with Foam. The work enables three people to create and record a sales message for transmission on the intergalactic market.
The intention of the ‘IEA’ is to help contextualise the challenges of climate change through a shamelessly self-interested perspective of retaining value prior to sale. Thus, shifting the scale of climate change from a large abstract notion to something a little more familiar and closer to home.
The components of the installation consist of a mechanical Morse code messaging machine to formulate the message. Drums to signal the urgency of the message and a keyboard to signal the feeling behind the message.
Below is the IEA’s sales pitch:
No buyer for your property? Has climate change ruined the housing market in your area? ‘The Intergalactic Estate Agency’ is here to help.
We will mitigate your fears by finding a buyer who sees the uninhabitable as a property with potential. Launched at the Eden Project, the Intergalactic Estate Agency can help facilitate your property sales by transmitting it them into space. Our friendly staff will advise on when might be the best time to sell and help you get the best price before the worst downturn in intergalactic history.
For more information please read my blog post on the residency and commission here on the Foam website
The monetary system in this project was designed within the cultural context of B.F. Skinner Walden Two. Through this project I imagine and design a payment system that challenges the established monetary function of ‘a store of value.’ Creating a new method of exchange that encourages people to actively destroy their money during a transaction. The process positively reinforces this behaviour through the creation of music, produced from the burning money within the transaction machine.
Walden coinage is made from potassium nitrate and sugar to produce smoke. The musical notes that are created are linked to the denomination of the money.
A snapshot of life within walden. Depicting a transaction between two people.
The large-scale interactive device makes palpable a radically different notion of money designed within the cultural context of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel WE. The highly planned society in WE, means trade is redundant and therefore there in no need for a ‘medium of exchange’ (trade facilitating) function of money. In this context money is a ‘culturally defined ‘store of value’ and ‘unit of account’ represented by a huge sphere, made up of individual sections that represent individual’s adherence to duty within the society.
When all sections of the sphere are together and form a perfect shape, citizens are performing their duties as intended. If a worker deviates from his duties, his section of the sphere slowly moves away from the collective and access to the city is slowly diminished.
We Currency was commissioned by Longbridge Light Festival
Crime pays was a preliminary project from my doctorial research. Well known payment expert David Birch plays the character ‘Don Rogers’ who presents an alternative payment system during a real conference at the BCS.
David presents a payment system I envisaged that is intended to solve the longstanding tension between anonymous cash transactions and tracked electronic payments:
Electronic payments track all our personal transactions, log all our spending habits and therefore create an outline of who we are as individuals, leading some people to question our personal freedom within a completely electronic payment system. On the other hand, old cash payments have given criminals an untraceable transaction that can facilitate organized crime.
Is privacy within our finances a matter of personal liberty or simply the harbourer of criminality?
The Crime Pays system is a completely electronic payment system, in which all financial transactions are open. Only paying for the privilege of privacy will ensure a transaction is hidden from public view
The project was commissioned by VOME and the EPSRC. In collaboration with David Birch and Consult Hyperion.
It was selected for an OUTPUT award
Listen about the project here on Resonance FM
Or read more here at We-make-money-not-art
In this project I envisage a monetary system designed within the cultural context of George Orwell’s’ ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’, specifically in the ‘disputed territories’ where the people hold a scepticism of institutional control. Meaning the ‘unit of account’ function of money is redundant.
Beyond the paternalistic control of big brother and between the super states of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, lie the disputed territories. Due to the continual change of ruler over these areas, no trusted financial institution has ever been established. Rather the people living within these areas have developed a payment system, which serves as both personal protection and a medium of exchange. This payment method embodies two ideas of value; on the one hand wealth and on the other life. The trader’s greed for gold is often tempered by the penultimate meaning of loss.
Initially presented at the Royal Geographical Society Conference.
A 4m-tall prototype ‘Fossilisation Machine’ commissioned for the 2010 Tatton Park Biennial, built to produce a fossil from one of the estate’s partridge.
This project acted as a test bed for my ‘Archival Burial’ design. The ultimate aim of which was to fossil a human being to place our existence into that of earths timeline.
Fossils are like books written by the hand of our planet millions of years in the past. They allow a glimpse into long-lost worlds offering insights and charging the imagination with images of what once roamed our planet. Unfortunately human control over the natural environment has, in most places, taken away the natural potential for the creation of a fossil; burials create the perfect environment for decay and its unlikely that human remains will last. 2million&1ad is the first prototype machine.
More about the project can be found here:
‘Electric Money’ was developed during an Intel sponsored research brief that ran at the Royal College of Art within the Design Interactions department. The scenario presents a dystopian future where electronic money has been hacked and a new system is implemented.
Electric money is an alternative monetary system that uses kWh as ‘currency’. The benefit of this system is that cryptography isn’t required to protect the system, as electricity is a form of power which can’t be created or destroyed only converted.
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Society seems to subject us to apocalyptic visions of the future on a daily basis. While we are often fascinated with the possibility of our civilisation’s breakdown, we often focus our attention on the dramatic and extreme consequences - without thinking about the smaller (and possibly mundane aspects) that make us human, and retain our dignity.
Tea seems to be one aspect of our culture which spans all classes, so important that the English drink more tea than any other beverage. This project explores how an Englishman/woman can retain a small part of their culture during extreme circumstances, imagining novel ways in which a simple cup of tea can be made without the regular amenities.
Commissioned by Nesta and in collaboration with Changist. The Honour depicts a scenario where a grass roots ad hock community currency is implemented during a disaster situation on the isle of man.
Extreme weather conditions caused long-lasting power outages that knocked out the digital payment system. A few residents working in the local museum borrowed one of the collections Coin Stamps to create coinage from old washers, copper pipe and roofing lead. This coinage begins to circulate and used by the locals as a makeshift medium of exchange. Alongside this replacement system, operates a plastic token coin which is given to individuals for services to the community.
