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Despondency Index offers a graph that combines a financial share price indicator and the levels of social despondency. The idea, produced by Natalie Jeremijenko and the Bureau of Inverse Technology, superimposes the suicide rate in San Francisco, from 1996-2000, on top of the Dow Jones index.

Jeremijenko’s installation provides an alternative analysis of the economic boom that took place in the decade of the 90s. The conventional view of those years is expressed by the Dow Jones index: a striking upward tendency, result of the exceptional economical growth over the years in question. However, the installation superimposes the statistics of suicides in San Francisco onto the conventional view. The suicides are represented by downward vertical lines layered onto the Dow Jones. It is simple to observe that the growth of the stock exchange is not accompanied by a corresponding decrease in the suicide rate.

This counterpoint of suicides and stock prices demonstrates the inadequacy of the Dow Jones to serve as a representation of American economic health. Created in 1985 by the financial journalist Charles Dow (founder of the Wall Street Journal), the Dow Jones Industrials Index calculates the weighted average of share prices of the 30 largest companies in the USA. The Dow Jones was the first financial index of all time, and it is currently the most widely used. However, it remains a very partial view of a broad and multifaceted phenomenon, the capital market, and one that ignores the social reality surrounding it. This shortcoming is especially noticeable when the Dow Jones is compared to the health of the United States. This happens when media focuses its attention persistently and exclusively on the index, as was the case, for example, in the aftermath of September 11. The layering of the suicide rate on top of the Dow Jones index re-positions it as a partial and purely economical representation of one sector of American society.

The data about suicides employed by the Despondency Index is provided by another interesting idea invented by Jeremijenko, the so-called “Suicide Box”. This consists of a system to count suicides by means of a computer vision device installed on the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, the most popular place for suicides in the United States. Using a technology originally invented for missile guidance, this device watches the bridge and begins to film when it detects vertical movement. The final product, the “Suicide Box”, shows a stream of people jumping from the bridge. In this fashion, moreover, the installation has challenged the conservative official statistics given by the California Port Authority. For example, during the first one hundred days of 1996, the Box registered seventeen “vertical occurrences”, whereas the Port Authority only mentioned thirteen. These controversial statistics are the basis of the Despondency Index.

With the Dow Jones in her sights, Jeremijenko directs her criticism at the most successful financial representation of all time. From New York to Zurich, from Chicago to Tokyo, thousands of stockbrokers consult the Dow Jones index every day. The reason for its success lies in its cohesive power, for the first time ever, instead of speaking about individual companies, one could speak about the “market” as a whole. Once the index was in place, investors could make statements such as “the market gained ten points yesterday.” The proof of this success can be found in the multiple local imitators which have sprung up all over the world: the S&P 500 in the US, FTSE 100 in the UK, CAC-40 in France, and the Ibex 35 in Spain. The Dow Jones, moreover, is mentioned hundreds of times every day by the world press, it has appeared in television series, such as “The West Wing”, and is even the name of a bar in Barcelona.

The installation is the first of its kind in terms of being an artistic approach to the index. Perhaps owing to their grey, mathematical aspect, economic indexes have rarely been the subject of art. This is an unfortunate omission, however, as the creation of an index implies the creation of a new economic reality.

The indexes have an impact on media coverage, political arguments and on the very nature of the factors they reflect. Without a price index, for example, it would be impossible to talk about inflation, as the definition of this is a rise in the price index. However, in Spain, for example, the price index does not reflect the cost of real estate, and consequently the current housing price boom is not registered on the inflation rate. Without the Dow Jones, as mentioned earlier, one could not talk about an American securities market. Yet this index includes only 30 companies, and the requisites to be part of the index have changed over the years. In short, the indexes are a fascinating, and largely unexploited, raw material for art. When confronting an index, artists are obliged to ask questions such as: What are its component parts? What parts does it exclude? Who stands to gain from the index? Who stands to lose?

In recent years, the markets have experimented a rich diversity of alternative indexes. The first, and most celebrated, was the Misery Index, coined by Arthur Okun in the decade of the 70s. This index added the unemployment rate to the inflation rate, and was widely used to underline the difficulties caused by the oil crisis. Currently, there are sector indexes for all industries, and alternative indexes, such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, for socially responsible companies In recent times, financial markets have introduced the curious possibility of buying and selling indexes. This offers stockbrokers a broader palette of colours with which to express their post-modern task of representing value.

The Despondency Index is one aspect of Natalie Jeremijenko’a pioneering career. This artist-engineer, who resides in New York, has created many daring interactive installations, putting technology at the service of radical ends, in collaboration with the Bureau of Inverse Technologies (Kate Rich and Daniela Tigani). One of these pieces, Feral Robot, uses toy dog-robots to detect pollution. She has exhibited her work at the Whitney Foundation and has been described by the MoMA as one of the 40 most influential people in the world of design and architecture. Jeremijenko is currently professor at the University of California, San Diego.