Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
GLOBAL CLOCK
Düsseldorf, 1999-2000— This installation was exhibited in The Art of Money at the
Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 1999/2000 and later in Money and Value , Biel/Bienne,
EXPO.02, Swiss National Exposition. The first version used recorded financial data
feeds from Reuters to track the movements of these three currencies in the days
and hours immediately surrounding the turnover of the millennium. The later ver -
sion displayed the data in real time over the duration of the exhibition. When trad -
ing stopped, so did the clock.
Money is, among many other things, a way of exchanging things that aren't
similar. Money can also change hands faster than things. Rather than simply stand-
ing in for things being exchanged, sometimes money itself, as such, is exchanged.
The installation represents on a clock the relative values of the euro, the yen,
and the dollar as they were reported moment by moment at the turn of the cen -
tury by the Reuters global financial data service. Together, these three currencies
account for approximately 90 percent of the global foreign exchange market.
Today, in a networked world, money moves from place to place as data, invis -
ibly, across cables and satellites at the speed of light. Here, a feed from a global
financial information network is rerouted into the museum—not so much to ren -
der the invisible visible, but to investigate the luminous immateriality of money
and its mutable media. The medium of this money is light, and it shows up peri -
odically on screens as the translation of invisible into visible light. Here, two
interfaces with foreign-exchange data provided by Reuters are displayed on the
walls. In the foreign-exchange market, where roughly 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars move
around the globe every day, the relative value of currencies fluctuates over time at
high speeds and short intervals.
Money, the storehouse of value, changes its value from second to second. Typi -
cally, these changes in value are represented as the jagged line of a graph that
moves over time: the standard Reuters real-time interface does just this. Global
Clock builds a new interface for seeing financial data in motion. The three hands
of a clock move in accordance with the irregular rhythms of the foreign-exchange
market. The change in values of the euro and the yen are each plotted against the
dollar and presented as a moving dot along the straight lines of the green (hour)
hand and the yellow (minute) hand of the clock. In these data feeds, the red dol -
lar (second hand) is the invisible standard against which the euro and the yen are
measured. As their dollar valuations change, the euro and yen symbols slide along
their respective hands; meanwhile, the dollar remains stationary on the red hand.
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