Replacing contactless payments with RFID hugs and tap dancing

Artist Heidi Hinder is turning RFID-enabled hugs into monetary transactions to prompt a debate on how we assign value and trust to virtual currencies and contactless payments. Through her project Money No Object  -- part of Watershed's  Craft and Technology Residencies programme launched this January -- Hinder has been working with the Pervasive Media Studio's technology team to translate simple human interactions into payments. A trained jewellery maker, she was driven to question the social context of monetary exchanges in a technological world in light of emerging new payment forms and the ongoing financial crisis.