Nearly 1 million people preordered an Apple Watch on Friday, which is more than the number of Android Wear smartwatches sold during the entirety of 2014.
But a sliver of that market isn't content with some Dick Tracy action at the base of their ulnas for $349. True ballers are dropping $10,000-$17,000 on 18-karat gold Apple Watch Editions, the most opulent wearable tech accessory since people started adoring their Google Glass with puffy paint.
It should be noted that they have no technical capability beyond the standard Apple Watches, which already come in 20 models. And while no one's wrist is actually going to be wearing one for at least another week, one San Francisco artist is already getting ahead of the curve.
Horrified by the 2012 reports that a Chinese teenager had sold one of his kidneys to purchase an iPhone and an iPad, Qinmin Liu has started a simple campaign (via Google Docs) to jab at the .01 percent's consciences, in hopes that they might donate their watches to her. In return, she will give them a kidney, up to 50 in all, presumably not taken from a human body.
"I am going to repeat this young boy's behavior in the process of the experiment," Liu said. "I question the relationship and balance between [a] human being's desire and action in modern society."
The Chinese-born Liu's provocations have been reported in these pages before, including a performance last May where she walked around San Francisco in hopes of establishing a genuine human connection that wasn't mediated through a tiny, handheld screen. This time around, she's asking only for people's names, emails, and countries of residence, but includes a box on the form asking people why they want to donate to QINMIN ARTS.
"I cannot push people to donate anything from their own pocket," Liu told SF Weekly by email. "This social experiment can be like a trade, I trade my kidney for their apple watches...It will make more people to be aware of what's going on in the society."
The donation form is otherwise very simple. "If you own or plan to purchase an 18k gold apple watch, you are 'rich and evil,' Liu writes on it. "PS: if you know Bill Gates, tell him about us."
As of this week, some 33 people have signed up, of whom 30 picked yellow gold and only one chose rose gold. (It is perhaps unsurprising that the global elite's tastes run towards the brash.) Although one assumes that at least some of these are curious onlookers with no intention to buy, let alone donate, an Apple Watch Edition, only 20 are American, with one claiming to hail from North Korea. The donation period ends on June 1, after which there will be a performance and installation in San Francisco.
Insisting that she doesn't hate technology or luxury goods, Liu freely admits to owning several Apple products. She is hardly alone in expressing distaste for this particular status symbol. Professed "Apple fanboy" Kevin Rose wrote in TechCrunch last month that the 18-karat gold version was "perfect for douchebags" and served only to broadcast status. Still, with the fevered devotion people display towards Apple products, anyone who's intent on buying might prove be difficult to dissuade. Could it require a change of kidney to get any prospective wearers to have a change of heart?
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