The exhibition will take the form of a darkened room with a domed ceiling upon which a computer display will be projected, like a planetarium. Audiences will be immersed in a world of real-time stock market activity, represented as the night sky, full of stars that glow as trading takes place on particular stocks.

Each traded company is represented by a drifting star, flickering and glowing as shares are traded. The stars slowly drift in response to the complex currents of the market, while outlining shapes of different industries and the huge multinational conglomerates like the signs of the zodiac. The movement of the stocks will be based on calculated correlations between the histories of each stock and those of its near neighbours. The stronger the correlation between the histories of the stock prices of any two companies, the more powerful the gravitational attraction between them. Although they will start out randomly distributed around the tank, over time the stocks will start to clot together and drift into slowly changing constellations, nebulae and clusters. Through this technique different industries will naturally start to emerge as galaxies. Any general disturbance in a section of the market will also have a visible effect on the sky - the recent collapse of east Asian prices and the sudden rush to sell would have caused all the companies affected to glow very brightly and to be pulled towards each other in a very powerful vortex. During the exhibition of the installation we hope to invite eminent financiers and economists to give lectures using the system to explain the mechanics of international capital using the language of astronomy and perhaps even astrology.


Within this environment, a complex ecology of glowing amoeba-like artificial life creatures will emerge for whom the ebb and flow of capital will serve an analogous function to the sun in our ecology. The creatures will be born into a world governed by forces beyond their control or understanding. The complex dynamics of the market are all they know. They sense the influence of the stock prices on their world; they feel them as ebbs and flows of heat and tide, of glut and famine, as the early Greeks felt the influences of the celestial bodies upon their lives. As successive generations of creatures evolve to adapt to their surroundings they try to form models of their universe - belief systems which will help them survive and predict the changing seasons that wash through their world. Eventually creatures may evolve whose immersion in this universe allows them to understand it better than ourselves, who will attempt to predict it’s movements.

Every creature will have a unique 'DNA' code which determines its behaviour (belief system) and life cycle, as well as subtly affecting its visual appearance - a genetic program. When creatures meet they will be able to mate, producing offspring which have a combination of the characteristics of both parents. Over time the evolutionary pressures in the tank will tend to breed successive generations that will be better at coping with the conditions in the world. A time of slow trading will be a difficult time for the creatures as they desperately search out any signs of food. During these times of famine many of the creatures may die of starvation. The creatures who survive will be those who's belief and knowledge about their world allows them to find food more easily. The final results of this process are impossible to predict, but we can guess at the likely course of evolution. it's likely that early on creatures will develop simple beliefs about the world - for instance, that a stock which is proving fruitful today will probably also produce food tomorrow. Later, more sophisticated behaviour may emerge, for instance some creatures will probably develop "grazing" techniques - based on the belief that similar stocks (those in the immediate vicinity) will be behaving similarly. Still more sophisticated models may develop - such as the ability to recognise periodic movements or patterns of cause and effect. If we allow it (we will only know if it's a good idea by experiment), predators and parasites may eventually develop, perhaps even "farmers". The possible range of creatures is very wide - maybe a shark-like species of creatures will develop, that can swim very fast to pick up flashes of food as soon as they appear. Maybe large slow moving creatures will be better able to survive the cycles of glut and famine, of population explosion and crash. Most likely a combination of different forms of life will develop to fill different ecological niches: lots of small fast scavengers able to survive on little flashes of food, and a few larger, slower, more heavily defended creatures that will be able to monopolise a consistent source of food, a few predator creatures that cruise the space looking for easy prey.

Like the complex visualisation systems used by investors and traders to analyse the market, the system abstracts the information to help us to read patterns in the data. Each layer of abstraction distances us further from the actual people that the data represents, until our system comes full circle and a new layer of living creatures emerges within the data itself.

The project links the earliest theories, such as astrology, to the latest scientific visualisation systems, in examining the urge to understand our environment, the desire to predict, recognise patterns and impose structure and the limits of this ambition. By exploring our desire to abstract and order our environment the project will act as a focus for debate about how much control is possible over complex systems such as the natural environment or the economy. The project explores an important issue for the 21st century, that systems which we have created, such as the economy, the latest computer systems, genetically modified organisms, or even ideas, can emerge their own behaviour and eventually transcend their origins and may already be more powerful than we can control.


The project will be exhibited at the Art Now Gallery at Tate Britain in London from the 6th of March until beginning of June 2001. We also hope to show the project in New York, in Japan and in Denmark.

Julian Stallabrass, lecturer at The Cortauld Institute in London and Mellon Research Fellow at the Tate, is working on a publication, which will accompany the exhibition.

IMPORTANT : we don't want to list anyone else's contact details without their permission, so please let us know if it's OK to list yours as soon as possible.

Lise Autogena
tel : (+44) (0)171 3795983
mobile : (+44) (0)797 4927550
e-mail : lise@autogena.org
Address : 2 Neals Yard, Covent Garden, London, WC2 H9DP

Joshua Portway
tel : (+44) (0) 973 123491
e-mail : josh@stain.org
address : Realworld Studios, Mill Lane, Box, Wiltshire, SN13 8PN

WEB PROGRAMMING & DESIGN

David Rainsford
tel : (+44) (0) 7968 528871
e-mail : david@stain.org

Simeon Portway
tel: (+44) (0) 7968 795103
e-mail : sim@stain.org

ADVISORS

Thomas S. Ray - Professor of Zoology
Department of Zoology
730 Van Vleet Oval, Room 314
University of Oklahoma
Norman, Oklahoma 73019
tel : (+1)(405) 325-3526
fax (405) 325-6202
e-mail: ray@santafe.edu
web: http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/~ray/

Daniel G. Weaver, Ph.D. - Associate Professor of Finance
Zicklin School of Business
Baruch College
tel : (+1) 212.802.6363
fax : (+1) 212.802.6353
e-mail : daniel_weaver@baruch.cuny.edu
address :17 Lexington Avenue/ Box E621,New York, NY 10010, USA

EXHIBITION CURATORS

Julian Stallabrass - Mellon Research Fellow
tel : (+44) (0)171 887 8761
e-mail : julian.stallabrass@tate.org.uk
address : Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG

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