A redditor just posted a video, in the subreddit r/WTF, of an installation currently on display at Art Basel Miami Beach. It's a repurposed ATM by art collective MSCHF that displays bank account balances of folks who insert their cards into it.
Art News reporter Shanti Escalante-de Mattei explains:
At art fairs, gallerists have the difficult job of sizing up each person who comes by their booth and trying to answer a simple question: exactly how much money does this person have? But with a new work by the Brooklyn based art collective MSCHF, presented by Perrotin, the guesswork is taken out of the equation. Anyone who wants can approach an ATM that MSCHFset up at the booth and reveal their bank account balance.
ATM Leaderboard (2022) is an ATM that MSCHF acquired from an ATM manufacturing company, but then retrofitted with a screen emblazoned with the word "leaderboard" and a camera. When someone inserts their debit card and plugs in their pin, the camera takes a picture as the account balance flashes on the screen and an animation spins around, declaring the participant well endowed or…not so much.
When there's nobody actively inserting their card into the machine, the ATM displays account balances and pictures of previous users, in a loop. Shanti Escalante-de Mattei further describes the experience:
Watching people approach the work is its own kind of show as they realize what it is and what it does, and have to make the calculation: do they really want people to know how much money they have in their bank account? One VIP present on preview day told a MSCHF member he could run the card on his behalf because he wasn't comfortable showing his face. What happens most often, according to Kevin Wiesner, a MSCHF artist, is that a group of four or so will approach the machine together, with one person ready and confident to put their card in the machine, but once faced with it, they hesitate, "'Actually…maybe not,'" Wiesner pantomimes. And perhaps that decision is warranted, because the judgements do come. On First Choice day, Weisner recounts people coming up to watch the screen and say, "Oh, that person should have more money…"
What do you think about this installation? Would you put your card into the machine?
