3rd Prize: Augmented Commodity Fetishism

Eirik Høyer Leivestad, Bård Hobæk

Augmented Commodity Fetishism, Photo: Ragnhild Aamås and Eirik Høyer Leivestad

Commodities are worth listening to: Taking this statement as a starting point, Karl Marx’s term Commodity Fetishism and Augmented Reality are combined into Augmented Commodity Fetishism, entitling a new app. This application will provide immediate access to all information pertaining to one specific commodity’s anthropocene effects, calculating the externalities of every step of the chain from production to distribution to consumption, including the afterlife of its waste products. Raising awareness is not the target, it is rather an exploration of information excess and systemic recursivity.

Hyperlink to the web-project

In the words of the jury, “The Augmented Commodity Fetishism app visualizes the complexity of metabolism in the Anthropocene era based on a European cultural artifact: cheese. Not a single step in its production takes place independently of fossil energy. At the same time, Eirik Høyer Leivestad and Bård Hobæk offer an elegantly ironic criticism of research and culture.”

Eirik Høyer Leivestad works as a university lecturer, freelance writer and translator. Leivestad has contributed in academic journals with articles on 20th century and contemporary thinkers and translated essays by Walter Benjamin from German to Norwegian.

Bård Hobæk is research assistant at the Center for Technology, Innovation and Culture, as well as in the Section for Medical Anthropology and Medical History at the University of Oslo.

The work is done in collaboration with Claire Tolan, web developer and artist.