SUGAR ENGINE

2025

Sugar Engine
autotrading system based on the realtime glucose data

S&P(Sugar and Poor's)
craft cola, recipe variable

'Sugar Engine' is an automated cryptocurrency trading system driven by the artist's real-time blood glucose data. Metabolic rhythms captured by a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) become algorithmic trading signals, while profits materialize as the sugar content in 'S&P (Sugar and Poor's)'—a craft cola served to exhibition visitors.

Six-channel displays visualize glucose fluctuations and market movements in real-time, revealing how intimate physiological data translates into financial language. The artist's body becomes a data production apparatus, transforming every meal and drink into investment strategy.

The craft cola, 'S&P (Sugar and Poor's)' served in the exhibition space reimagines 19th-century medicinal tonics. With sugar content modulated by trading performance, visitors literally 'ingest' the artist's metabolic data transformed through market mechanisms into consumable energy.

The internet, once developed to connect the world, now transmits glucose concentrations from our bloodstreams in real-time. In this hyperconnected era, how do our bodies become raw material for data capitalism?

'Sugar Engine' pushes the logic of the quantified self to its extreme. Blood glucose monitoring becomes a tool for speculation rather than health management; bodily optimization reduces to market returns. This system captures our present moment where biopolitics and financial capitalism converge.

Just as sugar was 'white gold' in 17th-century colonial plantations, biometric data has become the new crude oil of surveillance capitalism. Through the circular flow of body-data-capital-body, the work exposes our condition as simultaneously producers and consumers, raw material and commodity.

Curator Taehyun Kwon
Graphic Design Sarok Jung
Food Production Partner Marvel Maison
Supported by Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture

Exhibition Archive, Factory2, Seoul, 2025

MIN YOUNG KIM

Performance

Installation

Research