Working under the direction of Irini Mirena Papadimitriou the Digital Programmes Manager,V&A, develop a set of images (at least 6) from the V&A digital programmes event ‘Future of Money’. These will then be used in a printed publication for the V&A digital programmes team.
CONCEPT : FORTUNE - TELLING
“Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the where withal: call it what you like, money matters. To Christians, the love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it is the sinews of war; to revolutionaries, the shackles of labour. But what exactly is money? Is it a mountain of silver, as the Spanish conquistadors thought? Or will mere clay tablets and printed paper suffice? How did we come to live in a world where most money is invisible, little more than numbers on a computer screen? Where did money come from? And where did it all go?”
- Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money
The evolution of credit and debt was as important as any technological innovation in the rise of civilisation.And money is synonymous with politics.To predict it’s future and depict it by means of illustrations, I took the brief very literally. Based on - ‘Fortune Telling’ the illustrations are a self explanatory pun. ‘Fortune Telling’ is interpreted as predicting the future (of money, here) as well as, money (i.e., fortune) itself speaking up. Money comes alive to determine it’s own future and possible impact on society.The political aspect of this artefact is seen as the personalities illustrated as a continuation from the currencies are people with power and authority and they use different means of fortune telling, as if, to imply that capitalism lives in the hands of a few. Regardless of the intent behind the invention or deployment of money, it has concrete social consequences that qualify in political terms.