What happens when an artist, a curator, a data processing engineer, a designer who specializes in videogames and a sociologist with expertise in economics all meet up?  No, this isn’t a bad joke that you might hear from a child, but a brief introduction to the team that makes up Derivart, a Spanish artist collective, which has been specializing in the crossover between art, technology and finances since 2004.

And it’s safe to say that, whether in a national or the international context, they’ve had lots of tricky situations to deal with. In 2007 they were already strongly criticizing Spanish property speculation with software projects like Hipotecadora (an application to calculate the age when you’d have just finished paying the mortgage), Burbujómetro (an interactive globe-shaped visual of the price of housing, which could be shot at with a toy gun), or Casas Tristes, where they developed visualization tools for decent housing, in the form of a map highlighting empty houses. 

A couple of years and a global crisis later, last year, 2009, they came firing back, increasing their range of interest: Gamebroker, a series of mini-games for Nintendo Gameboy on the main crises of the last three decades; Inspector or Manager, software tools that question the role of SGAE, by putting themselves in their shoes, as well as those of the poor fool who thinks he can play any song he likes without our very own Sheriff of Nottingham becoming aware and claiming his spoils. The icing on the cake is surely Fuck you Hirst, where instead of paying homage to the extremely wealthy artist who goes by that name, stickers have been designed to determine the real value of a work of art, bearing in mind the effort involved and personal criteria when appraising the work. As long as Derivart keep on holding the economy in check, I think we can breathe easily.

http://tinyurl.com/lhtzl7