(Working Title)
The traditional functions of money, as first published by William S. Jevons in 1875 are: 1) medium of exchange: that is, an intermediary object used in trade to avoid the inconveniences of a barter system; 2) unit of account: a standardized unit of measurement of the value goods and services; and 3) store of value: an object that can be used to transfer purchasing power over time—Nowadays, when the value exchange through bills and coins is increasingly replaced with bits; when these transactions are invisible to the naked eye since money can now leap through space; when the monetary unit remains the same, yet it is now digitally stored as a data unit—new challenges, roles and interactions emerge to the surface of humanity. The pickpocket, for example, is now a hacker; the commissioned artist is now an application developer; and the bank shares some of its functions with retailers and mobile carriers. And what will happen with the free and anonymous property of bills and coins, in a world where money is now data—one that can be stored and tracked along the way? Some traditions will definitely change. People will not throw off their phones to the fountain of fortune, and it is hard to believe that small change will be transferred to the artist playing the violin at the subway platform by using bump technology.
Mine is a project that tells a story about the old and new material forms of money. My exhibition will document the material evolution of money (from physical to digital), and how major changes in form have had an impact in its functions and human interactions.