Artificial Changelings, a romance thriller about shopping, is the story of Arathusa, a kleptomaniac living in Paris in the late nineteenth century during the rise of the department store. She is dreaming of Zilith, an encryption hacker in the future. Arathusa suffers the constraints of Victorian society. The thrill she receives from stealing is erotic. Through her dreams Zilith becomes the means by which she imagines a different life and at the same time a parallel reality through which the story comments on how consumer economy, from the Industrial Revolution to the present, shapes identity. Artificial Changelings uses extensive digital effects to create a rich visual atmosphere that represents both the future and the past as metaphor.
