micro project 5---identity at play

This picture shows my opinion of the relationship between money and universal love. My assigned action is to curve something that we use every day but never make too much thoughts on it. That’s why I choose money, or more specifically paper bills as the objects to curve. I live in an international residency. On my floor, there are varieties of nationalities but we’ve lived harmoniously and happily in the same space for almost a year. I really love these people and they make me realize that no matter how many differences we have from each other, including the skin colors, the original languages and living habits, we live in the same universe, we all speak English here and we share the same thing—love. Yes, that’s right. Because of love, we understand each other and try to make our living environment a better place. That’s why I never understand there are so many wars and conflicts happening in the world every day. I believe the most significant reason is money. So in this picture, I curve all varieties of paper bills from our residents living on my floor and put it in a S shape, which is symmetrical and perfectly curved.

I collected eight different currencies: Singaporean dollars, Rupees, RMBs, Korean Wons, pounds, US dollars, Malaysian dollars, and Yens. Then I curved each paper bill into a circle with the help of paper clips. Next, I organized them in a S shape. I took photos of each step and used the last photo to combine into a photoshop JPEG. The background of the final image is the universe. Within the two circles in the big S shaped by curved paper bills, I put a money earth and a heart shape earth. Through this picture, I want to express my wishes, which is also my true feeling, that no matter how important money is to people, love outweighs everything.

During the process, I also found some interesting facts about these currencies:
1. Apparently US dollars have the least creative among the eight currencies: there are 5 face values in US dollars—1,5,10,20,100—but they are of the same size and same color!
2. Only the 50000 Korean Won has a female face on the front.
3. Unlike most currencies we see, the picture on the back of 10 Singaporean dollar is a group of people doing all kinds of sports instead of places of interest in that country.

final image