Plugimi (Sascha Pohflepp)

The collection of our projects on the Future of Money appeared on Boing Boing today, thanks Cory!

(Best thing are the comments, like “Isn’t asking art students about money a little like asking eunuchs about sex?“)

Just finished the first bit of my dissertation. The topic has slightly shifted but gained a bit in focus I guess. I’d highly appreciate feedback and/or suggestions for research materials about future impacts, and especially people to meet on the West Coast in July and August (yes!).

When I started the research for this dissertation, I originally set out to look for ‘grand projects’– endeavors like Herman Kahn redesigning whole African nations, the architects Superstudio re-imagining Manhattan covered with giant structures or Nikola Tesla’s countless patents, many of which could be world changing if only realized. Yet curiously, when asking around for more examples of such projects, by far the most relevant reply came from a friend in California, suggesting a broad range of work, ranging from transhumanism, nanotechnology, computer science to projects like Steward Brand’s Long Now Foundation, a truly grand project which aims to give people a ten-thousand-year scope of history by creating both a clock that works in this cycle and a library. However fantastic this might seem, it is deeply rooted in the alternative culture of the 1960s and 1970s, just like Brand himself. I became increasingly interested in the implied connections and the reasons for which these projects at first glance seemed much more relevant for the present than, for instance, many of the radical architectural visions of the last 30 years such as Superstudio.

Eventually, I came across an essay by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, titled The Californian Ideology, which was initially published in 1995, at the onset of the initial boom of the internet and the so-called New Economy. While fairly ideological itself in demanding “Europeans to assert their own vision of the future”, a call to arms for the dormant Left against what they perceived as a “resurrection of [...] economic liberalism”, Barbrook and Cameron did manage to successfully point out the key paradox of a Californian ideology, should it exist. This paradox essentially consists of the unlikely combination of countercultural notions of fundamental transformation of society and the financial backing that these ideas came to have. This, at least at this scale, arguably unique constellation is what has rendered the rise of information technologies so successful in the last 40 years. Even more so, with the virtual community having long become a main-stream phenomenon in the developed countries and continuing to change how we socialize, work and play, the potential of the industry which evolved around this “hybrid faith”, as Barbrook and Cameron call it, is far from exhausted. In the light of global climate change, in large parts popularized by former New Economy-proponent Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth, the ecologist notions which formed the foundation for a Californian ideology in the near future might attract attention and investments at an unprecedented scale.

Yet, what might have an even greater impact in the medium-term future, is the fact that the many of the paradigms and notions associated with information technology have been increasingly prevalent in biology, especially with the seemingly exponentially increasing possibilities of manipulation at the molecular level of living organisms. However, considering its historical origins, this development can only be regarded as consistent if not consequential. In this dissertation I will attempt–through sourcing various materials, as well as hopefully through interviews with some of the past and current protagonists–to historically trace the transformation from American fringe culture into a system of technologies, which in the last decades have experienced enormous “global resonance”. From there on, I will try to extrapolate the present developments into the future, especially in relation to notions and technologies which will be likely to have a far greater effect on our natural environment–and ultimately on ourselves.

(Image: ATS-3, the US communications satellite which took the first photo of Earth in whole–an image which later appeared on the Whole Earth Catalog)

In our technological culture, there’s currently a strong movement towards an amateur or do-it-yourself approach. With people hacking all kinds of devices and processes, biology and medicine–eventually life itself–is no exception.

In recent developments, we have seen cancer-patients effectively conducting self-experiments using a drug called DCA after Canadian researchers and especially a New Scientist-article had generated a huge amount of interest. One step further, projects like OpenWetWare provide frameworks for open research, enabling people outside of institutions to participate in research and application of science, especially genetics and synthetic biology. Notions which might eventually lead to a future as scientists like Freeman Dyson suggest–where “domesticated biotechnology [that] once it gets into the hands of housewives and children, will give us an explosion of diversity of new living creatures”.

What would a near-future scenario in which people have the means and skills to engage with their own illnesses on an experimental level look like? Or–more provocative perhaps–one where a collapsing public health system is encouraging patients to do so, even providing the frameworks and the tools.

It currently appears that there’s two steps to it: firstly, there’s the home molecular genetics side, where patients might follow recipes they find on the web to reproduce and use zero-day research as it happens. They would isolate parts from a certain organism’s DNA and insert it into something else to produce the desired result, which has to be something that can be ingested or injected. I believe this would be more or less possible today since 2006 I participated in a workshop with Beatriz da Costa, Christopher Kim and scientist Tau-Mu Yi in which we genetically modified yeast (pictured above) using techniques that could be followed be practically anyone.

The second step is a bit further fetched, but quite interesting in terms of a scenario. It would have patients actually engaging in research, becoming active producers and contributors of information while they try to isolate information from organisms. Things like Craig Venter’s voyage on which they sampled millions of new genes come to mind. There might be a new kind of tourism in which patients go ventering, or bioprospecting, after they’ve heard that there’s animals or plants in a remote part of the world that have a certain ability which might help them cure their illness. Whole colonies of amateur scientists in areas with great biodiversity might be imaginable, half lab, half hospital.

I’m currently starting off my dissertation at the Royal College of Art and have to submit a draft by Friday, which will pretty much define the boundaries in which I will move about in my research and writing. The subject is Grand Gestures and focusses primarily on ambitious projects that aimed to be world-changing or were generally megalomaniac in one way or the other.

In doing so, I am hoping to extract some assessment of what made work resonate with the world in general and gave it agency (or maybe why it failed spectacularly), which might lead to humble hints of strategies for current and future endeavors in art and especially design.

So, since it’s (quite literally) a biggish subject , I’m looking for projects to research around and structure my point with. If anything comes to mind when reading the above, please quickly drop me a line in the comments. Think Buckminster Fuller, Superstudio’s architecture visions, Herman Kahn redesigning whole nations from a flying think tank or also the notions of the Californian ideology with some of its roots in the 1960s. Any hint appreciated, from the obvious to the weirdest.

Banks are facing a massive loss of confidence since their customers have realised that depositing money effectively means allowing it to enter the global financial playground. Those who panicked will need to be slowly re-accustomed to investing because there is no such thing as living detached from the markets anymore.

This apparatus for individual mitigation management allows for anxious customers to place, move or even withdraw their assets from the CEO’s desk in their own home, determining how their money is actually being invested by the bank. It consists of a miniature office, an RFID-enabled table, an e-ink display showing the latest financial headlines, a cable connecting it to the bank and a small figurine with a detachable head. Should the current CEO be replaced, a new head would immediately be issued.

After the kit has been assembled and plugged into the wall, tokens for individual assets can be placed on the table and will, depending on their position on the table, more or less risk-adversely be invested by the bank. The anxious customer will probably watch the office closely, especially the financial headlines, and is likely to take action should he or she become increasingly concerned, adjusting the assets to restore a personal sense of comfort.

The overall design aims to convey a sense of control over systems and inherent risks, giving an individual the possibility to tweak certain aspects of an otherwise immaterial world and thus offering a remedy for the fear of a crash. It is, however, to some extent a placebo since it does not liberate the investor from an overall systemic risk, which can not be escaped.

More photos.

New work from Design Interactions and pretty much everyone else, massive show – Monday, 28th January from 18.30h at the RCA, Kensington Gore right next to Royal Albert Hall.