The Voting Booths painted white, blend into the white Gallery space just as many of our everyday unconscious actions blend into our lives. The Voting Booths aren’t here to tell us ‘how to vote’, instead they reframe our actions, by juxtaposing ‘actions with ‘votes’, the works prompts us to consider the broader implications of our daily choices as individuals, while also indirectly posing questions around individual autonomy, ‘voting’ in the misinformation age, democracy and equality of votes.

Inspired by Kant’s Categorical Imperative and more familiar concepts such as the Golden Rule. I have developed upon the saying ‘Vote with your Wallet’ and created a literal voting booth that you can vote at using your Eftpos card, aptly named “PayWave”.

Contrasting the ‘action of paying’ with the ‘action of voting’ in “PayWave” is then developed further with “Pay Attention” which comments on how we literally ‘pay with our attention’ as we navigate ‘free-to-use’ social media in a monetized digital realm. By paying attention and engaging with social media we are inadvertently voting. With influencers as politicians, not only is every “like”, a ballot cast, but every second spent on a video, is monetized and increases that videos visibility in the algorithm.

The third booth “Pay It Forward” posing how we might choose to act altruistically in simple ways, such as “planting trees we won’t sit under the shade of”, is juxtaposed against the first two more passive actions.

Containing two choices, a bowl of native Kowhai seeds and a pile of Pine seeds, this booth further highlights the nuance in navigating trying to “do good”.

Growing pine trees is encouraged in the “fight against climate change” however they are incredibly invasive and they reduce our biodiversity, where as natives such as Kowhai trees, are non-invasive and they increase biodiversity by providing food for our native wildlife.