Emotion Scape, Economics of Emotions, (Keynote)

We are at the edge between human need and human greed. No need to be inside the Matrix to see that the world is covered with data quantifying all human activities into convertible and interpretable figures. As the new part of the Mechanics of Emotions series of works, E-SCAPE TODAY! proposes to play with this ambiguity between human and economic values: emotions vs stock. Is there a direct relation between the financial stock growth and the evolution of the emotional state of real people? Economy is now so disconnected from the materiality of goods that we cannot expect it to consider the human feelings as a valuable, negotiable matter. If the Web reflects the stock data, it provides also tools to build a symbolic representation of the emotional state of cities and citizens all over the world. The real time evolution of the emotional status says more about the perception of the highly responsive human kind. The Mechanics of Emotions awake these hidden representations, creating emotional cartography of the planet and also sculptures (Frozen Feelings), machines (Emotion Vending Machine), performances and urban scale works. Between weather report and stock index, Emotion Forecast (e-forecast.com) is the first attempt to forecast the world's emotion. E-SCAPE TODAY! Is a significant evolution of OCCUPY WALL SCREENS displayed on the Big Screen Plaza by the Streaming Museum in New York City last February as well as during the last ZERO1 biennial, San Jose (California).