Drift Alley: An Inventory of Survival Economies

^{Still from Drift Alley: An Inventory of Survival Economies (2026). Photo courtesy of Debbie Ding.}

Debbie Ding

Drift Alley: An Inventory of Survival Economies

2026

Single-channel digital video with sound

Commissioned for INDEX Collection

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Drift Alley: An Inventory of Survival Economies presents a panoramic digital frieze of fictional shopfronts inspired by the conserved shophouses and microeconomies in Singapore's Little India district. The work unfolds as a continuous street elevation of 9 conservation shophouses. Each building hosts a fictional trade or service that reflects the evolution of digital economies in the age of artificial intelligence and the metaverse. Collectively, the shopfronts present a speculative catalogue of services responding to the uncertainties of life in the near future.

Informed by the architecture and visual culture of Little India, the work brings viewers through back alleys teeming with informal exchanges and speculative economies. It considers how artificial intelligence and virtual technologies are reshaping labour, exchange and identity, while revealing the informal strategies that emerge in response to technological and socioeconomic changes.

The work is part of Drift Alley, a series of works by the artist that is set in a speculative Southeast Asian cyberpunk world inspired by Little India. It imagines the underbelly of the metaverse with characters navigating unstable systems in search of agency and survival in a virtual economy.

^{Stills from Drift Alley: An Inventory of Survival Economies (2026). Photos courtesy of Debbie Ding.}

About the artist

Dr. Debbie Ding is an artist-scholar working at the intersection of artistic research, technology and game studies. She builds virtual worlds in physical and digital media, engaging with virtual reality, game design, data visualisation and digital mapping. She is a certified Unity Associate Game Developer. Her PhD research on ludogeography, or psychogeography in virtual worlds in games, at NTU’s School of Art, Design and Media received the NTU Medal of Honour and NTU Graduate College Interdisciplinary Research Award. She is currently Assistant Professor in Digital Arts at the Singapore University of Technology and Design.

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The INDEX Collection brings together commissioned works across moving image and media art that offer insight into contemporary artistic practice while engaging audiences through experimentation, dialogue and new perspectives.

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