About Billing ’06 is an art work that explores the medical cost of living in 2006. This work was created during Katherine Sherwood’s Art, Medicine and Disability class by Nick Reid. This work is still being developed. Medical cost can be discussed vaguely, with out a strict focus on a person, or a person’s body. Billing ’06 is an attempt to give a player an understanding of this vague data by forcing a player to role play. Billing ’06 is made up of two parts, a data entry interface and a role playing experiment. The Interface The data entry interface was created so that people can contribute their medical costs from the year 2006. The interface is very simple, allowing a participant to mark a bill on a timeline, label it and type in the price. How To Contribute To contribute your data, you have to register first. The data that you should contribute are itemized lists of medical bills that you incurred during 2006. Bills can include any product or service that you received that had a medical purpose. Examples include (but are not limited to) MRIs, doctor visits, specialty foods, over the counter medication, living assistance or crutches. The Experiment The role playing experiment is like a mirror where players are randomly assigned a participant’s medical costs from 2006. As time progresses in the mirror, medical bills will move towards the player. When a bill touches the player, the player will see their total cost for the year increase. This experiment will be able to be played in two formats, on the web, and as an installation.
The web version of the game is played with a mouse, and will be available soon.
The installation version will use the player’s body as captured by a camera to place the player into the mirror. This will be installed in the Worth Ryder Gallery from April 2 to 6 as a part of the Perscription show.