Toytown

Toytown is the sister installation to Vending Machine - a piece developed during Ellie’s period of residency at Plymouth College of Art in 2009.
Together they form part of a trilogy of new works which use specially designed software to respond instantaneously to news headlines reported in the BBC News RSS feed. The third installation in this series is the yet-to-be-realised proposal Monument (Maggie), in which a full-blown 1979 disco lies dormant in a gallery space, activated only when news of Margaret Thatcher’s death is announced.
For Toytown, a dilapidated but operational 1980s kid’s car ride is installed in the gallery space. Connected to the special software, it springs into life only when search terms relating to the recession appear in the headlines on the BBC News RSS feed. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to ride the car as-and-when this occurs
Toytown was first shown as part of the Interim MFA exhibition at the Newbery Gallery, Glasgow School of Art from 16th - 23rd May 2009. It was programmed by Ben Dembroski in PureData and Python.
Search Terms
‘administration’, ‘administrators’, ‘airbus’, ‘bank’, ‘bankruptcy’, ‘banks’, ‘benetton’, ‘bill’, ‘bills’, ‘bn’, ‘borrowed’, ‘borrowing’, ‘borrows’, ‘bp’, ‘budget’, ‘budgeting’, ‘budgets’, ‘business’, ‘businesses’, ‘cac’, ‘capital’, ‘capitalism’, ‘cash’, ‘centrica’, ‘chrysler’, ‘citigroup’, ‘city’, ‘close’, ‘closes’, ‘closures’, ‘contract’, ‘contracts’, ‘costs’, ‘credit’, ‘crises’, ‘crisis’, ‘crunch’, ‘cut’, ‘cuts’, ‘debt’, ‘debts’, ‘decline’, ‘declines’, ‘deflation’, ‘dollar’, ‘dollars’, ‘dow’, ‘downturn’, ‘earn’, ‘earnings’, ‘earns’, ‘economic’, ‘economics’, ‘economies’, ‘economise’, ‘economy’, ‘employed’, ‘employees’, ‘employers’, ‘employment’, ‘equities’, ‘equity’, ‘exchange’, ‘exchanges’, ‘export’, ‘exports’, ‘figures’, ‘finance’, ‘finances’, ‘financial’, ‘firm’, ‘firms’, ‘fiscal’, ‘fiscus’, ‘forecast’, ‘forecasts’, ‘ftse’, ‘fund’, ‘funding’, ‘funds’, ‘gdp’, ‘globalisation’, ‘gloom’, ‘gm’, ‘growth’, ‘hbos’, ‘hitachi’, ‘house’, ‘houses’, ‘housing’, ‘hsbc’, ‘imf’, ‘import’, ‘imports’, ‘income’, ‘inflation’, ‘interest’, ‘investment’, ‘investments’, ‘investor’, ‘investors’, ‘job’, ‘jobless’, ‘jobs’, ‘labour’, ‘liquidated’, ‘liquidation’, ‘loan’, ‘loaned’, ‘loans’, ‘loss’, ‘losses’, ‘magners’, ‘manufacturer’, ‘manufacturers’, ‘manufacturing’, ‘market’, ‘markets’, ‘meltdown’, ‘money’, ‘mortgage’, ‘mortgages’, ‘nasdaq’, ‘nationalisation’, ‘nationalised’, ‘natwest’, ‘negative’, ‘neoliberal’, ‘neoliberalism’, ‘nissan’, ‘opel’, ‘output’, ‘outputs’, ‘pay’, ‘payment’, ‘payments’, ‘pension’, ‘pensions’, ‘petrobras’, ‘pinch’, ‘pound’, ‘pounds’, ‘poverty’, ‘price’, ‘prices’, ‘privatisation’, ‘privatised’, ‘profit’, ‘profits’, ‘properties’, ‘property’, ‘rate’, ‘rates’, ‘rbs’, ‘recession’, ‘recessions’, ‘recoveries’, ‘recovery’, ‘repossessed’, ‘repossession’, ‘repossessions’, ‘retail’, ‘risk’, ‘risks’, ‘sale’, ‘sales’, ‘saving’, ‘savings’, ‘share’, ‘shares’, ‘shoppers’, ‘shopping’, ‘slowdown’, ‘slump’, ‘slumps’, ‘spending’, ‘squeeze’, ‘sterling’, ‘stimulate’, ‘stimuli’, ‘stimulus’, ‘stock’, ‘stocks’, ‘store’, ‘stores’, ‘struggle’, ‘struggles’, ‘struggling’, ‘subsidies’, ‘subsidy’, ‘suzuki’, ‘tax’, ‘taxes’, ‘tesco’, ‘trade’, ‘traded’, ‘trades’, ‘trading’, ‘treasury’, ‘tui’, ‘unemployed’, ‘unemployment’, ‘wage’, ‘wages’, ‘worker’, ‘workers’, ‘workforce’, ‘wto’.
Exhibition History
16 May - 23 May 2009, Newbery Gallery, Glasgow School of Art
12 March - 9 October 2011, Watermans, London
1 November 2011 - 30 April 2012, Star & Shadow, Newcastle
Further Reference
Other Projects
- High Street Casualties: Ellie Harrison’s Zombie Walk
- Dark Days
- After the Revolution, Who Will Clean Up the Mess?
- The Global Race
- Transition Community of One
- Attempt at an Inventory...
- Anti-Capitalist Aerobics
- The Other Forecast
- The Redistribution of Wealth
- The End Product
- Austerity & Anarchy
- Fair Game
- Early Warning Signs
- A Brief History of Privatisation
- The History of Revolution: Ellie Harrison’s Fireworks Display
- Press Release
- General Election Drinking Game
- Toytown
- Vending Machine
- The History of Financial Crises
- Transactions
- Know Your Thinkers & Theorists
- Angel Row Jukebox
- Self-Destruction (Building Site Ballot)
- I’ve Been Watching You
- Daily Data Display Room
- Daily Data Display Wall
- Sneezes 2003
- The Monthly Sculptures Determined by the Daily Quantification Records
- Gold Card Adventures
- Statistics Are Hot Air
- TicTac Typing & Peanut Typing
- Mass = Energy = Time
- Potential Generator
- Kinetic Cake vs Kinetic Carrot