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CHINESE GOLD
UBERMORGEN.COM, 2004

It mixes up the real "virtual" (the game) with the virtually "real" (money)

Untitled 4, 60x40cm, Lambda Print on Dibon in Shadowbox, Edition of 5 + 1 a.p., Courtesy Fabio Paris Art Gallery Brescia, Gallery [DAM] Berlin

In China there are over 2000 Online-Gaming Workshops that hire people (over 500.000) to play online games such as World of Warcraft (WoW) day and night. The gaming workers produce in-game currency, equipments, and whole characters that are sold to American and European Gamers via Ebay. These people are called „Chinese Gold Farmers" and their practice is building up credits and online value through the monotonous repetition of basic tasks in online games such as World of Warcraft. The trade in virtual assets is very real, and outside the control of the games' makers. Millions of gamers around the world are prepared to pay real money for such online credits, which they can use to progress in the online games. China is the factory of virtual goods. The computers are never turned off. The future is now!

In Warcraft, it’s the currency itself that’s being overproduced, not just any product. That means it'll take more units of that currency to exchange for any product. Inflation. The price of everything goes up. Everything you worked so hard to save up suddenly becomes worth so much less. The Warcraft economy appears to be on the lip of this plunge and administrators are taking steps to curb inflation. When they find a career farmer, they ban the character. Now the farming company has to re-buy the game and set up a new account. This makes the process of creating these goods overseas more expensive, and functions similar to a tariff (which is a protective tax). There is a balance, which in the real world, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve, and International Organizations try to maintain. And by maintain, I mean getting as much cheap shit for themselves as possible without throwing the system completely out of whack. (In the finance industry, human rights is a footnote, if anything.) What lies ahead for the Warcraft economy? Let’s keep watching it in the future, let's keep watching chinese prisons, let's keep watching the structurally weak areas of the USA.

Keywords: Metallic - Alternative Energy Sources - Trade Agreements - Ghostbuster, Roaming - Steel, sugar and services - Consumer-made content and value - 1500 Gold $ 131.99 - close Internet cafés in Beijing to prevent the spread of SARS - Modified sees/crop, hydrogen – The Myspace angle – Media Hacking – prepaid Pass9 - a group of WOW players in China committed mass suicide, virtual die-ins – Taxes, copyright and Freedom of Speach, in game civil rights - Unions fighting Louis Vuitton living oceanfront - Boomtimes in Kuala Lumpur – Kaogma Festival - Megaphone diplomacy - New cartoon uproar

It mixes up the real "virtual" (game) with the virtually "real" (€)

Bank of WoW
http://www.bankofwow.com
Guarantee: All Gold in our BANK are Made Totally Manually!

Photo Series

Belgrad Session 1 - 8 ( * )
Blue Series, Untitled 1 - 7 ( * )
MTV Series 3, No. 35, 45, 51, 52, 53, 55 ( * )
MTV Series 4, No. 33, 34, 41, 47, 48, 54 ( * )

Videos

Chinese Gold Farmers Preview ( * )
UBERMORGEN MACHINIMA NO. 0 ( * / * )

Text

M. Bittanti, D. Quaranta (editors), GameScenes. Art in the Age of
Videogames, Milan, Johan & Levi 2006.
Hardcover, 454 pages, 25 x 25 cm, 200+ hi-res illustrations,
available from October 2006. ( pdf / html )

WMMNA - We-make-money-not-art Interview with Ge Jin
Homo Ludens Ludens - Gold Farmers
Interview by Regine Debatty, May 8, 2008 ( * )

Magazine Contribution

Maska 2023+ (pdf)

Exhibitions

Moderna galerija, Ljubljana/SI ( * )
Group show "Arteast Collection 2000+23"

Beijing New Art Projects,, Beijing/CN ( * )
Group show "FIELD OF VISION: BEIJING" ( * )

REX, Belgrade (Serbia)
"Chinese Gold"

Partners

Rex/B92, Belgrade ( * )
Les Pepinieres ( * )

Netznetz.net ( * )
City of Vienna / Stadt Wien / MA7 ( * )

Maska Magazine ( * )
Moderna galerija, Ljubljana ( * )

Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia (I)
Blackbox Gallery, Copenhagen (DK)

Links:

Wage Slaves, 1UP ( * )
www.chinesegoldfarmers.com ( * )
Mtv News ( * )
WMMNA ( * )
Der Spiegel (D) ( * )
Uni Zürich (D) ( * )