Health and Wealth is a fable for the utopian possibilities modern society offers us, the game we are all participants in, the universal syndicate we are each a part of.
Health & Wealth syndicate result
The Space Shuttle at Belfast was a way to structure the coordinates of the private world of individual hopes and personal values that invisibly saturates our social life.
The data gathered produced the numbers for the Health & Wealth lottery syndicate.
Participants in the Health & Wealth syndicate were mainly employed in the public sector. Blackstaff Square is surrounded by Civil Service and Inland Revenue Tax offices, as well as welfare offices for housing benefits, a Business School and the well known Europa Hotel. The square is not a socialising space, more a transitory space for moving in-between work and home.
In the Space Shuttle:
Location: Blackstaff Square Belfast
Dates: 9 to 19 October 2006.
The Space Shuttle was used to research the specific social and cultural environs of Blackstaff Square
central Belfast gathering information daily over 7 days.
Space Shuttle
Sample 01 : William G:
Date: 11.10.2006 Belfast
Health and Wealth form: assign 1 value on each axis to relate to the other axis. These variables are rotated daily. In this sample of choices made by William G in accordance with his personal values, he has 6 lottery numbers marked in [red ]
The 6 numbers are: 3 -8-21-34-39-44
These numbers assign:
LOVE to: ME MYSELF
SECURITY to: MY STREET MY NEIGHBOURHOOD
WEALTH to: MY CULTURE MY PEOPLE
and so forth...
7x7: Health & Wealth is based on data. It projects a 7 x 7 grid onto public space as an intervention. These are the 2 types or axes of variables to measure our lives by as shown here (roll-over). There are also 2 further axes or variables to consider:
The number of people and agents as a daily flow
The amount of time in days
1-49: Health and Wealth uses the structure of the National Lottery based on permutations of 1 to 49. The lottery form is a statistically democratic grid through which all social aspirations can be channeled through in a million different ways every day. It is a form of social currency that gives & takes away - barters - in ways that both over-simplify and unify cultural complexities.
The lottery converts all possible permutations of 1 to 49 to ideally form into a pyramid; the top of the pyramid [1] symbolises the jackpot and the demographics of distribution and social development.
The fable is based on the modern approach to happiness. In day-to-day terms the contradiction that governs modern life is that personal security is realistically achievable only through individualism and material consumption. Personal happiness however can only be secured through social interaction and a sense of relatedness.
It is this inherent conflict of means embodied in modern culture that is played out by Health and Wealth.
Based on the workings of an omnipotent enterprise that feeds on the aspirations of its discordant peoples, spinning and winning hearts and minds, confusing past and future...
Health and Wealth - a mythic utopian fable