MONEY PATTERNS [INSTALLATION]

Money Patterns began as an idea for an immersive multimedia installation, before I knew I would also write a book about money. I wanted to transform my knowledge of the overwhelming complexity of financial systems into something people could physically experience: a non-linear maze of images, objects, stories and sounds, where visitors follow their curiosity, discover unexpected connections and gradually piece together their own understanding of money. As my concept matured I realized that I also needed to write a book. The spatial experience is an additional layer with a distinct audience.

While the book Money Patterns explores the history, mechanisms and social consequences of money through storytelling and analysis, the installation takes the same questions into another dimension: a more visual, sensory and playful exploration that can reach different audiences and communicate ideas that words alone cannot. Together, they offer two complementary ways of engaging with a subject that shapes almost every aspect of our lives, yet remains surprisingly poorly understood.

The installation is organized around three interconnected concepts: the Body (Token), the Ghost (Ledger) and the Gravity (Interest). Each reveals a different dimension of money, inviting visitors to get lost, make connections and leave with at least one aha moment—and perhaps a few new questions.

BACKGROUND

After years of researching, writing and explaining cryptocurrencies, speaking at conferences and talking to journalists, politicians and people from all walks of life, I kept encountering the same problem: people struggled to understand cryptocurrencies because they lacked a basic understanding of money and debt in the first place.

Financial illiteracy is one of the great failures of our education systems worldwide. Even people who have studied or worked in business, finance or economics often possess only fragmented knowledge. Many are one-trick ponies, highly specialized in one corner of the financial system without understanding how the pieces fit together. I was no exception. Despite studying business and economics, I left university without really understanding what money is, the different forms it has taken across time and space, or how money, debt and interest relate to one another. Almost everything I know today came from my own research, rather than my formal education.

My journey towards understanding money often felt like a Dadaist adventure: collecting endless pieces of a gigantic puzzle and trying to assemble them without a map. And I find this outrageous. How can we meaningfully participate in a democracy if we don't understand the financial systems that govern so much of our lives? How can we question, let alone redesign, something we don't understand?

That frustration became the driving force behind both the book and the installation. I want to make the invisible workings of money more accessible, not by simplifying away their complexity, but by giving people different ways to explore it.

SPATIAL METHODOLOGY

It's a site-specific layout that caters to the upper gallery of the Ásmundarsalur, utilizing the venue’s verticality and light to construct a non-linear maze of context. The structure can be oriented along the primary longitudinal axis of the location (final length will depend on actual dimensions of the hall ).

Part 1. The Body (Token)

What makes something money? And why have so many different objects served as money throughout history? The first part invites visitors to encounter the many physical and digital forms money has taken across time and space: from Icelandic vaðmál (woollen cloth once used as legal tender) and tea bricks in Central Asia to early European banknotes, gold-backed currencies, modern fiat money and cryptocurrencies. Seen side by side, these examples challenge the assumption that money has one natural or inevitable form.

Selected monetary objects and their representations are fossilized in transparent resin, forming a sculptural landscape that visitors can move through. Depending on the exhibition space, these elements can be mounted on walls or suspended from the ceiling, creating the physical body of the installation.

Part 2. The Ghost

But money is more than an object. It can also be a promise, an obligation or the memory of a social relationship. Long before modern currencies existed, societies developed ways to keep track of who owed what to whom. The second part takes visitors beyond the visible token to explore the invisible systems of trust, debt and record-keeping that make money possible. From Sumerian clay tablets and British Exchequer tally sticks to Renaissance double-entry bookkeeping and the shared digital ledgers of cryptocurrencies, it traces how societies have recorded and organized economic relationships.

Fragments of historical and contemporary ledgers, texts and images appear on semi-transparent mesh surfaces, creating overlapping layers of information. As visitors move through them, records emerge, disappear and overlap—making the invisible infrastructure of financial relationships spatially tangible.

Part 3: The Gravity

The final part explores what happens when money meets time. Interest, one of the most consequential and controversial mechanisms in financial history. From Aristotle's argument that money should not breed more money to the exponential effects of compound interest, it examines how financial claims can grow independently of human labour and the biological rhythms of life. The exponential curve becomes a central metaphor: inherited capital from the past can exert an ever-growing gravity over the present, shaping the distribution of wealth across generations. Visitors are invited to question the tension between finite human lives, finite natural resources and financial mechanisms that can generate potentially limitless claims on the future.

A series of ultra-short audiovisual films explores these questions through fragmented narratives, images and sound. Inspired by the scroll-based consumption of social media, the films deliberately mirror the fragmented way we encounter information about money today. Visitors navigate the content themselves, piecing together ideas that may seem disconnected at first but gradually reveal larger patterns. Depending on the venue, the films can be presented on vertically oriented screens arranged as an intimate maze within the larger installation, inviting visitors to pause, scroll, watch and reflect.

MOCKUP /CONCEPT SKETCHES

The sketches below illustrate possible spatial arrangements developed during earlier stages of the project. They are not fixed floor plans. The final configuration, scale and technical setup will be adapted to the architecture and possibilities of each exhibition venue.