hyperstore

About

The works on display deconstruct the mechanics of online retail phenomena to highlight the effect they have on our perceptions of trade, origin, distance and distribution. Collectively functioning as a critical video essay, works by different contributors to Hyperstore acknowledge the turbulence of change at a time when independent high street bookshops are suffering from competition against online stores.

Consisting of visuals, animation, music, illustration and critical writing, Hyperstore occupies throughout three retail spaces. The show is set as a fragmented representation of online shopping corporations and their ‘Fulfillment Centres’ – the world’s largest containers of organised chaos. Inside these vast ‘everything stores’ a workforce of pickers and packers are the only witnesses to events going on behind the anonymity of the intangible digital shop front.

Book Test Unit is an interdisciplinary research group situated in the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art. Set-up to make experimental, critical and speculative enquiries into writing, designing and reading experiences, the Unit’s first point of focus has been the
book.