An electronic allegory of Casino Capitalism
No one is free. The winners must compete, the losers must be exploited
An electronic allegory of Casino Capitalism
At the Value Quest Bourse you do not play for your own profits but the sake of the industrial sector, comparable to real life situation when it is up to your personal choice and responsibility to invest in the sector. The Bourse’s Indices give detailed and summarized information on ratings and movements of the industrial sectors. Basic data includes the winning strategy--has the highest number of won points, the volume--a number of bets, the value--the sum of won and lost points, and the change of value. The fluctuation of VQX 10 Index is displayed at the histogram. The competition between sectors is emphasized by paraphrased statement of Marx and Engels "No one is free, the winners must compete, the losers must be exploited." A circuits of capital (knowledge and economic) and a circuits of class struggle are spinning the cycle of society/or/commerce, and every participant is influenced by the actions--reactions of the others. As Isaac de Pinto, an investor from the 18th century, stated long time ago “Commerce is a game, and nothing can be won from the beggars. If one wins everything from everybody all the time, it would be necessary to give back the greater part of the profit voluntarily, in order to begin the game again.”
It is said: The way you work, for whom you work, makes who you are. We can add: How you invest, where you invest, makes how the world will look like. The global escalation of economic crisis brought great income inequality and job insecurity. According to the joke “the war against poverty is over--the poor lost,” the middle-class groups swoop down on the new poor, and the poor swoop down on the underclass. The pattern “general welfare“ stands behind the social action to work for the common good. The welfare raises concerns where it is seen to have implications for public order, as one politician wittily stated, “If you do not give the people social reform, they are going to give you revolution.”*08 Lack of global solidarity for growth of economic wellbeing and an acute social and economic polarization have provoked citizen backlash movements in the US, Europe, etc.
But what is the position of art in a time of recession, budget cut off, and the burst of art market bubble? Shall the art/artist survive?
Art and Crisis--Facing Bureaucrat is Urtica’s satirical art video on automated logic of bureaucracy and their response to economic crisis.
Storyline: The main characters, an Artist and a bureaucrat Eliza, are entering into a conversation. The Artist is mainly preoccupied with the issue Shall the art/artist survive? while Eliza is trying to find an answer according to a cultural policy guidelines. The action is divided into five segments: <identificate keywords> <discover minimal context> <choose appropriate transformation> <generate response in the absence of keywords>, <provide an ending capacity for ELIZA "scripts"> Those actions are also fundamental technical problems when artificial intelligence computer programs are created.