New Money

“What is the New Money (NM$) Cryptocurrency/NFT Project?” 

The New Money (NM$) Cryptocurrency/NFT Project is a digital, sculptural project meant to throw-into-high-relief, the hidden labor of the people who explore its use as a currency. In this way, money can talk, revealing the unheralded emotional, social and somatic labors that make producing and exchanging for value possible. For example, a teacher may be paid for her labor preparing lessons and managing a classroom, but not be paid, or thanked or even noticed, processing the challenging emotions that emerge from sexism, racism, or anti-LGTBIA policies and behaviors, even though processing them has to happen if she is to be effective at her work as a teacher. 

New Money Cryptocurrency, in the context of its private exchange, allows its users to be paid for producing values through goods and services and to have their hidden labor made plain. New Money does this by encoding each ‘coin’ with recordings, made by users, of some aspect of the hidden labor that made earning it possible. These short recordings are the way New Money offers its users the opportunity to have their labor thrown into high relief. 

New Money (NM$) Cryptocurrency can be removed from its private exchange at the request of the artist and publicly traded as more traditional art NFTs, where, hopefully, they might inspire broader conversation and speculation about our collective labors, visible and hidden.