OII: Value Market is a virtual reality project that questions both the presentation and valuation of art in this digital age. Initially motivated as a response to the endless maze of lifeless metaverse “galleries” featuring an eye-watering parade of bored apes and punks, this work seeks to present an antithesis, where a metaverse art encounter is immersive, philosophical, and experiential.

Upon entering through a VR headset, the environment immediately imposes the claustrophobia and hyper-commercialized art market as a physical experience. The viewer is introduced to a maze-like market, with only one product on offer – Campbell’s Tomato Soup in cans; thousands upon thousands, displayed on shelves, free for your picking.

At Value Market, the soup cans are the obvious object of value, both in its presentation as the only merchandise and in its reference to Warhol’s coveted Campbell’s Soup Can series. However, explore deeper, you begin to find soup cans abandoned shopping carts and discarded in trash bins. Dive deeper yet, you may be greeted with a series of coupons and flyers that advertise identical soup cans with wildly differing prices.

Implanted throughout are intrusive neon signs that implore, admonish, even beg for you to make a purchase. Mirroring the dizzying NFT market, this new order seems to be just a tech version of the old hegemony writ large. Without a deeper notion of what art and collectibles mean to you, how would you know if you should pay $99,999 or 99¢ for your soup can?

This experience can be accessed interactively through a VR headset, a desktop computer or enjoyed as a pre-recorded loop through an
affordable cardboard headset or a mobile phone.