What happens when justice, value, and citizenship become just another subscription in an algorithmic marketplace?

My portion of this exhibition imagines a near-future civic collapse where justice becomes a subscription and citizenship is pay-to-play. At its core is Algorithm & Associates, a speculative AI law firm powered by Bogus Bucks, a fake cryptocurrency that turns civic duty into a transaction. Using loud, scam-era visuals and overblown advertising tropes, the work satirizes how automation and corporate manipulation hollow out public trust. The defaced billboard becomes the only real act of resistance. A reminder that when systems fail, dissent is the last authentic civic tool.

Signals

The exhibition engages signals of contemporary civic breakdown, algorithmic decision-making, corporate branding, financial abstraction, and overstimulated visual culture. Familiar forms such as advertisements, legal language, and speculative currency are exaggerated and distorted to reflect how authority and value are constructed, circulated, and consumed.

These signals function as warnings rather than predictions, pointing to systems already in motion and the subtle ways design participates in shaping belief, trust, and compliance.

Sketches and Ideas 

For this project, I initially designed an extension for browsers and mobile devices that would detect AI content, warning users of the potentially misleading media they are about to consume. 

Directions & Drafts

Two core directions emerged through iteration: Algorithm & Associates, a speculative AI law firm exploring the automation of justice, and Bogus Bucks, a fabricated currency examining the abstraction of value. Together, they frame a civic ecosystem where legitimacy is performed through systems that resemble trust while eroding meaningful participation.

Final Outcomes

Developed a user interface for Bogus Bucks, along with a bus stop advertisement, where above we can see a reponse of resistance to an alternative billboard ad that might be seen at a bus stop in this future we have imagined.