Visual Value

Who holds the power of design, and what do they do with it?

A speculative report on visual inflation, with the receipt as a visualization of owed debt and depiction of value. 

With this project, I was interested in playing with the receipt as a visualization of owed debt and depiction of value. Simultaneously, I was wondering where to position myself as a designer. What is my role as visual communicator? Design the receipts that are handed out by institutions and organizations? Or can I take on other responsibilities? The report on visual inflation and receipt you see below is a summary of this inquiry on social design, critical design theory and visual culture. 

Receipts are generally printed out and handed over to you by institutions and organizations. Putting the theory into practice, I wanted everyone to be able to print out receipts; as a way of empowering and questioning who is talking in the conversation about visual value. For this, I linked the receipt printer to the microphone of my laptop. The spoken word is then directly printed out on the receipt printer. 

This code is still a work in process. In the future, I want to be able to change the design of the printed receipt, and have a seperate microphone, so the code is not dependable on my laptop to work.