RESEARCH INSPIRATION
Neural sensing & signal integration.
The original research provides a starting point for thinking about how subjective experience might be represented.
SPECULATIVE DESIGN / MEMORY & INEQUALITY
MEMORIES.THE ULTIMATE LUXURY.
What happens when some can buy a richer life, while others must sell their past?
EXPLORE THE WORLD01 / RESEARCH TO HYPOTHESIS
From memory
to a market.
What changes when personal experience can be extracted, valued and exchanged?
PROJECT HYPOTHESIS
A transferable experience.
This project imagines a universal representation through which memories could be stored, transferred and traded.
CRITICAL QUESTION
Who gains a richer life?
If experience becomes an asset, access to a richer inner life may follow the distribution of wealth and power.
The memory economy and transfer devices are speculative proposals. The social consequences are the focus of the inquiry.
02 / THE SOCIAL LANDSCAPE
An economy layered
into society.
A geological metaphor maps social groups, market infrastructure and exclusion within the same imagined memory economy.
Memory aristocracy
Rare memories become possessions through which culture and status are defined.
Licensed elite
Access to premium memories supports enhanced ability and social status.
Memory market
Experiences are packaged, priced and circulated as commodities.
Memory labour
Lived experience and trained performance become material for paid memory production.
Unmodified humans
People live without augmentation, disconnected from the memory economy.
The forgotten
Outside the system: unrecorded, untradable and unempowered.
Experience enters as labour.
It accumulates as privilege.
03 / RULES OF EXCHANGE
One exchange.
Unequal consequences.
01 / THE ASSET
Experience becomes a commodity.
Personal memories can be packaged, priced and circulated in the imagined market.
02 / THE COST
The seller loses the memory.
After a transaction, the seller permanently loses recollection of the traded experience. The buyer gains an additional experience.
03 / THE LABOUR
Life becomes something to produce.
Rare, intense or demanding experiences can be deliberately sought out to create memories for sale.
THE PROVIDER
Resources for the present.
A recollection surrendered.
THE MARKET
Packaging. Pricing.
Circulation.
THE BUYER
An experience beyond
their own lived time.
04 / THE EXCHANGE, MADE PHYSICAL
From lived experience
to a tradable asset.
These prototypes explore the bodily encounter with the imagined exchange: fitting, connection and the space in which it takes place.
01 / A CLIMB
An experience is produced.
A demanding climb generates a memory that can be offered for sale in this imagined economy.
02 / THE EXCHANGE
The recollection is surrendered.
The provider receives resources, while losing the ability to recall the traded climbing experience.
03 / AFTERWARD
The traces remain.
A buyer gains the experience. The provider returns home with bodily traces of a journey they can no longer remember.
A soft surface follows the neck, shoulders and upper back.
TOUCHPOINT 01 / THE MEMORY PROVIDER
The body becomes
the interface.
Designed for the memory provider, the neck-and-shoulder unit explores how an intimate exchange might connect to the body.
- 01 / IMPLANTED INTERFACE
- An imagined port beneath the skin connects the provider to the system.
- 02 / WIRED CONNECTION
- A cable makes the act of connection physically visible.
- 03 / FLEXIBLE CONTACT
- A reduced form follows the body instead of extending along the spine.
TOUCHPOINT 02 / THE EXCHANGE ENVIRONMENT
A private space.
A public economy.
An enclosing shell, reclining support and head assembly create a personal setting for the imagined exchange.
- 01 / ENCLOSING SHELL
- The curved enclosure defines a sheltered space around the head and upper body.
- 02 / RECLINING SUPPORT
- A contoured recliner supports the back, waist and legs.
- 03 / HEAD & SENSOR ASSEMBLY
- Head support and a detachable sensor explore fit, positioning and connection.
05 / TWO SIDES OF THE MARKET
Two sides of
the same economy.
Illustrative market scenes contrast the circumstances of providing and purchasing memories.
01 / THE SELLER
A life for sale
Personal experience becomes a source of income. What the buyer gains, the seller must surrender.
02 / THE BUYER
Purchasing a richer life
Adventure, intimacy and achievement become experiences that can be purchased without living the original journey.
06 / AFTER THE TRANSACTION
The wound remains.
The experience
is gone.
After the transaction, water stings the cuts on his fingertips. He pauses, unable to remember how he got them. The climbing equipment and summit photograph beside him prove that he was there, but the experience itself is no longer his to recall.
The loss becomes visible in an ordinary moment, after the exchange has ended.
07 / QUESTIONS THIS WORLD LEAVES OPEN
What are we
really trading?
- THE SOURCE OF SCARCITY
- Is permanent deletion a technical limit, a market condition, or something else?
- THE BOUNDARY OF MEMORY
- What remains in the body when recollection is gone—and where does the loss end?
- THE POWER TO PARTICIPATE
- Who can grant or deny access to the memory economy, and who benefits from that decision?