Artist Project / Sloth Index

William Justice’s “Sloth Index” is an element of the “Human Morality Index,” a website that measures, through several quantitative methodologies, what it considers to be the state of human moral progress on the planet. It draws from real-time information sources such as stock market tickers and human development index projections, and subjectively assigns that information to units of “moral or spiritual measurement” based on the capital vices (Seven Deadly Sins) and heavenly virtues. Following the fluctuations of stock prices for video game makers like Nintendo, breweries such as Budweiser, and the manufacturers of that ur-symbol of couch-potatodom, the Lay-Z-Boy recliner, the “Sloth Index” tracks the condition of acedia in our consumerist age.