Project Title: LifeMart™
One-Sentence Description:
LifeMart is an interactive self-checkout–style system that examines how the value living beings become measurable inside market, biological, and emotional frameworks.
One-Paragraph Description:
LifeMart is an interactive self-checkout system that exposes how the life becomes measurable through human-centered metrics of value. Presented as a familiar retail interface, the project asks participants to “purchase” various forms of life by adjusting a slider that represent “killability”. Through this mundane act of checkout, users become the implicit measuring device and indicate how markets, biological classifications, and personal attitudes quietly shape what lives are seen as disposable, commodifiable, or grievable. LifeMart employs this type of interaction design to transform a mundane consumer action into a direct revelation of the arbitrary and violent logic behind our valuation of life.
The topic I explore in this thesis is how humans assign unequal value to different forms of life, particularly animals such as fish, insects, and other non-charismatic species. I examine how perception, moral framing, and economic systems collectively shape valuation. This inquiry is guided by questions such as: Why do some lives become “valuable” or “grievable,” while others remain invisible or uncounted? How does society price life?
My tentative hypothesis is that life valuation is fundamentally human-centered. Non-human lives do not belong to humans, yet they are continually evaluated and priced through human-centric metrics such as labor, desirability, and market demand. This same logic extends to human life, which can be transformed into emotional value for family members, labor value in the marketplace, or even the speculative worth of organs based on the perspectives of others. By presenting different forms of life as zoe, or bare and commodified existence, and bios, or socially recognized life, LifeMart contrasts audience reactions to expose the violence and arbitrariness embedded within human-centered valuation systems.
I am creating an interactive installation structured as a self-checkout system. Participants begin by scanning the code of a selected life-form. The interface then displays the organism’s image and a pricing breakdown before inviting the participant to adjust a single slider representing killability. As the slider moves, the system transitions through four valuation layers, each with its own description, visual shift, and price breakdown. These layers show how subtle changes in attitude can reposition the same life within different economic, biological, or emotional categories. When the participant confirms their choice, the system prints either a portrait-only label or a market-style price label. Through this process, users become aware that their own judgments form the basis of evaluation.
I chose the self-checkout format because it positions the human user as the central measuring device. Instead of passively observing a critique, participants must actively perform the act of valuation. The familiarity of the interface makes this process intuitive, and the nature of this consumer interaction shows how human-centric frameworks convert complex beings into data points and commodities.
When selecting which commodities to display in my installation, my focus was non-human life, questioning how species like fish, insects, and other overlooked beings are commodified. I did not intend to include human life in the system. However, while revising my résumé and reflecting on my own labour, age, nationality, and the fluctuating value of my time and credentials, I realized that human life is also subject to similar valuation mechanisms. In extreme contexts, people become commodities through trafficking, organ trade, or exploitation. This personal insight led me to examine existing valuation practices more broadly: they do not only target non-human species, but also extend to human life by reducing it to data, resource, or economic unit.
Although the core interaction exposes how easily life can be absorbed into systems of valuation, I did not want the work to remain entirely pessimistic. To offer a moment of resistance within the system itself, I designed a small “escape hatch” inside the interface. If participants move the killability slider to zero, the valuation mechanism collapses and the interface no longer displays any pricing layers or metrics. Instead, the screen shifts to show the organism simply as a living being, without economic or biological categorisation. The printed output in this case is only a portrait of the life-form, without any price. This alternative pathway allows users to step outside the valuation logic they were previously enacting and reflects the possibility, however small, of recognizing life without immediately converting it into measurable value.
The goal of LifeMart is to reveal the underlying violence, arbitrariness, and human-centered assumptions embedded in valuation systems. Through interaction, I aim to create a moment of discomfort and reflection by prompting participants to question how societies categorize all forms of life, including humans, into metrics such as food value, pet value, research animal value, job market value, insurance value, or organ-trafficking value. The installation invites viewers to confront their role within these systems and to consider how design, markets, and cultural narratives determine which lives become grievable and which are quietly priced for consumption.