Artist: ooakosimo
Medium: Interactive HTML, CSS, JavaScript and p5.js
Structure: Thirteen interactive mechanisms across three bodies of work

What if each artwork is one mechanism inside the same machine?

Digesting the System is a curatorial framework connecting three independent bodies of interactive work: Gold Diet, Flood Control Corruption, and Tastes Like Metal : Spits Gold.

These works were not originally created as one series. The exhibition places them inside a shared circuit of appetite, bureaucracy, corruption, damage and survival.

A paper-cut figure consumes gold without satisfaction.

Public money enters an administrative machine and reappears as ghost infrastructure, inherited debt, displaced communities and the quiet aftermath of disaster.

Eight Cat Machines bite, perform, ornament and produce while attempting to survive inside the same system they criticize.

Together, the works describe a machine that consumes public and private value, processes it through institutional structures, and transfers its consequences onto bodies, communities and future generations.

COMMAND GRID

INPUT — UNIT 00

GOLD DIET

An HTML loop of a paper-cut bust obsessively consuming gold bars from a conveyor belt.

Greed has a shape. Wealth has a taste. The head remains still; the mouth remembers.

Paper shadows, conveyor rhythm and shimmering regret.

Inspired by a fleeting vision of a statue eating gold.

PROCESS — UNITS 01–04

FLOOD CONTROL CORRUPTION

Four interactive mechanisms examine stolen infrastructure, borrowed futures and disasters that reveal what bureaucracy hides.

Ghost projects absorb public funds. Chains distribute debt across generations. Crowds absorb the human cost. Floodwater exposes what paperwork concealed.

The system promises protection while producing vulnerability.

OUTPUT / FEEDBACK — UNITS 05–12

TASTES LIKE METAL : SPITS GOLD

Eight interactive Cat Machines occupy the contradiction between critique and complicity.

They watch, bite, perform, ornament and produce. Resistance becomes decoration. Damage becomes jewelry. Protest is repeated, softened and resold.

The machines bite the structure that feeds them while continuing to survive inside it.

THE CIRCUIT

Appetite enters.
Bureaucracy processes.
Infrastructure disappears.
Debt remains.
The crowd pays.
The survivor turns damage into output.
The machine begins again.

Interaction is essential. The works do not resolve without your presence—and even then, the system never settles.

PROVENANCE

The exhibition connects works whose original records exist across different platforms and chains.

Those earlier tokens remain the provenance layer. Digesting the System is the independent exhibition layer: a command grid that preserves their distinctions while revealing the machinery running between them.

Concept, design, code and curation by ooakosimo.

Flood Control Corruption — Interactive Glitch Series

An interactive political artwork about stolen infrastructure, borrowed futures, and disasters that reveal what bureaucracy hides.

This is the story of the "Flood Control Corruption"—a vicious cycle where HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of pesos, earmarked to build defenses against typhoons and massive floods, are systematically siphoned off. This fortune is funneled into "ghost projects" that never break ground and substandard structures that crumble with the first rush of water.

This is not just stolen wealth; it is stolen debt. These billions are borrowed from international lenders like the World Bank, shackling future generations of Filipinos. We are forced to pay with our taxes for money we never saw, for protection we never received. The perpetrators operate with impunity, hidden behind layers of bureaucracy.

Their crime is only exposed by the inevitable disaster—the catastrophic floods that take the lives, homes, and futures the money was meant to protect. Imagine the nation that could have been built with that stolen future.

Instead of disappearing into the pockets of the corrupt, those hundreds of billions could have empowered millions of families. It is a theft not just of money, but of potential, leaving citizens to pay the ultimate price in currency, safety, land, and freedom.

Concept / Notes

First, understand what you actually have:

• It’s not a single piece—it’s a system.
• Across these sketches there is a shared narrative: Flood Control Corruption
• Repeating symbols: fists, chains, crowds, glitch, fire
• Different interaction grammars:
  • Mouse proximity
  • Mouse pressure / click
  • Particle explosion
  • Glitch amplification
• Multiple rendering strategies: blocks, particles, procedural shapes

This is a series—a living document, not a single JPEG pretending to be political.

Individual Sketches

1. Ghost Projects / Borrowed Billions

Description: Glitch blocks and unstable structures visualize projects that were never completed, or barely functional.
Interaction: Hover and click to amplify glitches and see the instability grow.
File: ghost_projects.html

2. Chains of Debt

Description: Broken chains and reactive particles represent the debt burden imposed on future generations.
Interaction: Mouse movement and clicks break chains further or intensify particle explosions.
File: chains_of_debt.html

3. The Crowd Pays

Description: Crowds of pixelated heads and voices show the human cost of corruption.
Interaction: Mouse proximity triggers subtle motion and particle responses in the crowd.
File: the_crowd_pays.html

4. After the Flood

Description: Quiet, degraded visual representation of aftermath—calm but scarred.
Interaction: Slight mouse movement creates ripple effects and glitch echoes.
File: after_the_flood.html

How to Use

1. Open each HTML file in a modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari).
2. Interact with the mouse to explore glitches, particle explosions, and dynamic effects.
3. Experience the visual and interactive narrative of Flood Control Corruption.

Credits

• Developed with p5.js for interactivity and procedural graphics.
• Concept, design, and code by OoakosiMo.

License / Notes

You may use and explore these sketches for personal, educational, or curatorial purposes. Commercial use requires permission from the creator.

PROJECT: Tastes Like Metal: Spits Gold

SERIES SIZE: Limited Collection of 8 Unique Interactive Machines
ARTIST: OoakosiMo
MEDIUM: Interactive p5.js (HTML5 / Canvas)

"A space where critique and complicity overlap."

ABOUT THE COLLECTION

Tastes Like Metal: Spits Gold is a collection of eight interactive “Cat Machines.”
Each piece functions as a looping system—watching, biting, ornamenting, and producing—while never fully resolving.

The series explores the contradiction of critiquing capitalism while surviving inside it.
Resistance becomes performance. Damage becomes jewelry. Protest is chewed, resold, and worn.

These digital works act as ancestors to a forthcoming physical series using pastel, charcoal, and aluminum foil.

INTERACTION

• THE GAZE: Move the mouse or touch the screen to engage manic, unstable eyes.
• THE BITE: Click or tap to trigger snarls, claws, punches, and gold-spitting gestures.
• THE NOISE: Grain, shimmer, and background corruption are generated in real time using Perlin noise loops, ensuring the damage is never static or repeatable.

PIECE LIST (01–08)

1. Critique & Complicity Overlap
2. Nothing Is Pure
3. Resistance as Ornament
4. Protest Becomes Resistance
5. Jewelry of Damage
6. Metal Taste
7. I Bite the System, I Sell the Bite, I Smile
8. Spitting Gold, Chew the Chewed

MINT DESCRIPTION

Tastes Like Metal: Spits Gold is one piece from an eight-part interactive series of “Cat Machines.”

Each work is a looping system of gaze, bite, ornament, and output. The machine watches you. You provoke it. It produces gold, damage, noise, or nothing at all.

The series explores the contradiction of critiquing capitalism while operating inside it. Protest becomes performance. Resistance becomes decoration. The bite is repeated, softened, resold.

Interaction is essential. The work does not resolve without your presence, and even then it never settles. Grain, jitter, and corruption are generated in real time, ensuring each encounter is unstable and unrecoverable.

This digital piece functions as an ancestor to a forthcoming physical series using pastel, charcoal, and aluminum foil.

CONCEPTUAL FRAGMENTS (NON-HIERARCHICAL)

These phrases recur across the series as visual, behavioral, and symbolic motifs. They are not individual works, but internal logic loops the machines repeat.

• A space where critique and complicity overlap.
• Chew the chewed.
• Resistance becomes an ornament.
• Protest becomes resistance.
• Nothing here is pure, only loud.
• Tastes like metal, spits gold.
• Bite the system. Sell the bite.
• Wear the damage like jewelry.
• I bite. I sell. I smile.
• Ensuring the damage is never static or fully repeatable.

GALLERY WALL TEXT (INSTITUTIONAL BUT NOT DEAD)

Tastes Like Metal: Spits Gold Interactive p5.js, 2026

This series presents eight interactive “Cat Machines” caught in a loop of critique and production.

The works respond to touch and proximity with unstable gazes, bites, and ornamental gestures. What appears as resistance quickly becomes decoration. Damage is aestheticized. Gold appears, but never accumulates.

The artist frames these machines as both critics of and participants in capitalist systems—biting the structure that feeds them while surviving inside it.

Each interaction produces unique noise and distortion, ensuring no fixed or ideal state can be reached.

SHORT ARTIST STATEMENT

I bite the system and it bites back and I sell the bite because rent still exists. This machine critiques capitalism while actively participating in it and that contradiction is not resolved. I made a cat that spits gold every time you provoke it and somehow that felt familiar.