<nettime> Coin - Note - Sign

[euro@cryptic.demon.co.uk]

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Help fill the Strange Case with euros!
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January saw the launch of a new virtual currency, the euro. The euro is the
first purely corporate currency: you can only spend it if you have a credit
card, write a cheque or work for a bank as a currency dealer. Coins and
notes will not exist until 2002, though there are prototype note designs on
the European Union website: I have borrowed these designs, and you too can
borrow them from this site:

http://www.cryptic.demon.co.uk/euro/cash.html

The euro is an idealistic project, and the notes, designed through a
competition, are very bland. The neutrality of the imagery tries to
represent fiscal probity and European unity. The effect is also to mask the
terrible histories of national conflict in Europe, which the euro is
supposed to help prevent happening again. Despite this laudable aim, the
suspicion exists that this currency is more for the convenience of global
corporations than for citizens. Behind the gleaming electronic facade of
the new Europe, poverty and inequality are still widespread.

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You are invited to design alternative notes, with imagery which perhaps
more accurately reflects either the contemporary situation, or histories of
European peoples. You may wish instead to question the notions of currency
or value exchange.

Once done, send an e-mail, with the image(s) attached. All designs will be
displayed at this site:

http://www.cryptic.demon.co.uk/euro/notes.html

10 designs will be chosen to be printed into alternative euro notes.
Another will be added to make 11, one for each of the States in the
Euroland. The money will then be transported to Lorient, Brittany in the
Strange Case and put on display at the internet art festival x-99 in March:

http://www.x-arn.org/x99/

The remaining designs will also be on display through a net terminal next
to the case. Some notes will be distributed to people at the festival,
perhaps also used in an attempt to purchase drinks.

Participation in this project will have several dimensions:

the exchange of simulations of a virtual currency, which only exists in
electronic or written form;

a design competition;

the printing of "counterfeit" currency;

the smuggling of this currency into the Euroland from a non-euro zone; the
display of said currency in public;

hopefully, some artistic and critical discourse on the nature of money
(whether "real" or electronic), perhaps also some questioning of the
realities of contemporary Europe.

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For further information, visit:

http://www.cryptic.demon.co.uk/euro.html

http://www.cryptic.demon.co.uk/case.html

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Coin - Note - Sign
the strange case of the euro
euro@cryptic.demon.co.uk
http://www.cryptic.demon.co.uk/euro.html

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The Strange Case of Art
http://www.cryptic.demon.co.uk/case.html

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