ICC





Preface
Admission
Works
Participation Artist's
Related Events




Panel Discussion
Artist's & Curator's Talk
Live on the Internet
Catalog

November 2 (Friday) - December 24 (Monday), 2001 Gallery A, B, C





Preface


In 1971, the world began playing two kinds of games. The first was a "video game," that began with the release of the first commercial game, known as "Computer Space." The other was a "money game," that began when money was no longer convertible to gold, and money became a type of "credit" that no longer had a value that was linked to some underlying standard. Money became pure information, represented only by digits.
The shift toward digital entertainment has greatly influenced the way we enjoy ourselves, and the shift toward money as information created a financial economy, an economy hundreds of times larger than the real economy.
The overarching theme of this design exhibit is money. But just what is money? How, exactly, does it represent value? The value of money does not come from any inherent or intrinsic material worth, yet the people and governments of the world have more or less agreed to adopt social constructs that allow us to use money as real, legally enforceable representations of value and worth.
In a broad economic sense, there are two types of credit: financial credit, and real credit. Simply put, one is "value that is easy to convert to money," and the other is "value that is difficult to convert to money."
The former is a monetary value itself; the latter includes things that we might describe with words like "love" or "gratitude." In both cases, "credit" becomes the basis for human interaction.
The "Credit Game" exhibit is an attempt to examine, from an artistic perspective, value that is easily convertible to money, and value that is not. (MASUYAMA Hiroshi, ICC Guest Curator)