Services: Illustration, Vinyl, Hardware, Physical Computation, Installation, Programming and Development
Key Takeaways
- Design and Development completed in less than one month
- Mindful reuse of salvaged hardware
- Created robust conversation on the future of digital services
Pay2Play is an installation that explores an alternate reality of micropayment monetization of the internet, influenced heavily by the writings of Jaron Lanier. Physical costs aside, we tend to think of the internet space as “free” in the nature of communication/expression and the price of information.
Pay2Play visualizes the latter in it’s most real, direct sense, paying directly for browsing habits in place of the ads and trackers that constantly capture and store and sell users’ data.
The physical act of putting a coin in a machine references arcade style gaming, which placed duration limits strictly associated with cost. Contextualizing these costs so that users can better understand the various social, behavioral, and financial economies the internet will help us better understand the future of digital experience and autonomies - a concept that is slowly being lost to a generations that know nothing but digitalization and socialization of the self.
In my courses, I often bring up the currency of our browsing, gaming, and smartphone habits. I say, “Nothing is free! You are paying with something!” For me, as a Gen X-Millenial, I can recall an undigitized era where privacy was precious and IRL the reality, but youth places so much faith in the gratis mentality regardless of how much is gleaned about them personally in the process- or at least until it’s served back up to them in creepy ways. This project is still in transition as I evolve to target these feelings specifically.
This project was funded by the J-stor foundation and was made for their NEXT Festival on data and privacy as an accompaniment to keynote speaker, Jaron Lanier.
Technologies: Javascript, Browser Extension, Arduino, Serial Communication