U.K. artist Joshua Portway believes that, just as the ancients gazed at the stars in hopes of finding patterns that would reveal their fate, modern investors - in equal wonderment and ignorance - seek portents of their destiny in stocks. (Undeniably, stocks and stars have aspects in common, such as black holes.)
Portway and fellow artist Lise Autogena have taken the stock-to-star analogy to a different plane. Their installation at London’s Tate Gallery presents a night sky projected onto a dome, with 4,000 points of light representing stocks from nine markets.
The work is hooked up to a live Reuters feed and powered by six superfast G4 Macintosh computers. The “stocks” pulse like real stars, reflecting trading activity, and move about in response to gravitational forces based on their stock market correlations.
Part of an exhibit that will run through June 3, the punningly titled Black Shoals Stock Market Planetarium is anything but derivative. Portway says he was inspired by his interest in the “aesthetics of information” and that he and Autogena sought to convey the “feeling of vertigo that accompanies the visualization of enormous quantities of information.” Or, for that matter, stock investing.
