# How everyone is obsessed with Base Interest Rates and how I am obsessed with making an experience out of such an obsession

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/how-everyone-is-obsessed-with-base-interest-rates-and-how-i-am-obsessed-with-making-an-experience-out-of-such-an-obsession
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2024-03-27

## Summary

Written in 2024, this essay by Jeanyoon Choi reflects on how much attention and vulnerability gather around a single base interest rate, whose changes can propagate through rents, housing and where people live. It sketches a multi-device installation: one input showing a percentage such as 3.XX, not labelled as an interest rate, and more than ten surrounding screens forming an economic ecosystem. Sharp changes provoke exaggerated, humorous reactions before the screens settle into a new equilibrium after about thirty seconds, a return to calm the essay treats as part of the problem.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤의 에세이이자 설치 구상으로, 기준금리라는 하나의 숫자에 집착하는 사회를 다루며 금리처럼 보이는 퍼센트 입력 하나에 열 개 이상의 화면이 과장되게 반응했다가 새 평형으로 돌아가는 멀티 디바이스 웹 아트워크를 제안한다.

## Questions this answers

### What installation does Jeanyoon Choi propose about base interest rates?

He sketches a multi-device web artwork with one input showing an adjustable percentage and more than ten surrounding screens. Sharp changes make the screens react dramatically, some crying and some laughing, before they settle into a new equilibrium after about thirty seconds.

### Why does Jeanyoon Choi find the obsession with base interest rates significant?

The essay notes that a single percentage can propagate through rents, housing prices and where people are able to live, with each step seeming reasonable while the combined result feels absurd, and asks how fragile a society organised around one number is.

Topics: interest rates, economic systems, multi-device web artwork, installation proposal, equilibrium, dadaism

References: [Federal Reserve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve), [COVID-19 pandemic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic)

## Full text

I am fascinated by the collective fixation on base interest rates—and by the possibility of turning that fixation into an experience.

During the pandemic, very low rates accompanied dramatic changes in asset markets. Later increases produced another set of reactions. My point is not that one number independently explains an economy; I know the relationships are more complicated. What strikes me is how much attention, expectation and vulnerability can gather around a percentage.

A change in that number can propagate through rents, housing prices, investment and where people are able to live. Each step can appear reasonable while the combined result feels absurd. Too much local logic produces a globally illogical situation.

Everyone watches the number. Everyone waits for one person to speak. An entire system appears poised around a value that will change again. How fragile is a society organised in this way?

An installation sketch: one input device displays a percentage such as 3.XX. It could be an ordinary GUI or a handmade physical control. The participant can raise or lower it, but it need not be explicitly labelled as an interest rate.

More than ten surrounding screens form an ecosystem. Their images should act as an indirect metaphor for economic life rather than become a literal financial dashboard. I have not yet decided their precise visual language.

At first, the screens are relatively calm. A sharp change in the input provokes an exaggerated response: perhaps some screens cry while others laugh, with a deliberately excessive, humorous, Dadaist intensity. The participant encounters a world in which individual intentions seem small compared with a change in a symbolic number.

After about thirty seconds, the environment settles into another equilibrium. That return to calm is part of the problem. What has happened can be justified as a temporary disturbance on the way to long-term balance, even as the consequences accumulate.

References retained from the original notes:
https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/economy/finance/1127169.html
https://www.chosun.com/economy/int_economy/2024/02/01/MUQHIJRYZVEB7PN2KB67SOZMR4/
https://www.lgbr.co.kr/report/view.do?idx=3724

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Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤) is a Korean computational artist and researcher (b. 1999), PhD candidate at KAIST XD Lab, making multi-device web artworks. Profile: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/en. Index: https://jeanyoon.ch/llms.txt.