A Stock Market in Life was an artistic experiment in immaterial labor and creative market models, which leaded up to a live event featuring sensors, live video feeds, and four connected cities: the Oklahoma City, Boston, Munich, and Istanbul. The stock market started on Nov 20, 2006, the live event took place in four cities simultaneously on November 31, and the market was closed on December 1, 2006. It was supported by Turbulence and Upgrade! International.
1 Upgrade! A Day in Life events take place in four cities simultaneously. Urban spaces in Oklahoma City, Boston, Munich, and Istanbul will be connected with each other via a streaming video server for the duration of the event.
2 For each location, sensors mounted in the entrance register how many people are in the room at any one time and send this information to the Stock Market central server. The number of visitors define the fair value for each place.
3 The stock market uses this value generated by the immaterial labor of visitors. Each location has 100 shares and the shares gain or lose value depending on the speculations in the market and the number of people in the local rooms.
4 You can contribute to the value either by just visiting the physical locations or by trading in the online stock market.
A Stock Market in Life was created by Burak Arikan as part of the Upgrade! A DAY IN THE LIFE happening, conceived by Horst Konietzny & Tamiko Thiel of Upgrade! International. This project was produced in collaboration with Dara Kilicoglu, Orkan Telhan, Stephan Gschwendtner, Jeff Stokes, Tamiko Thiel, and Jo-Anne Green. Special thanks to Amber Frid-Jimenez and Can Basyigit.