I sent this out to the mailing list a few days ago, curious about the response. Then I realized that it was no good keeping this idea a secret. So, for anyone interested, here’s a brief description of Artisia.

Artisia is a country for people with passion. Basically you sit there and you do nothing but what you love. The idea is to be in flow for a good part of the time.

Only some people are even allowed to be in Artisia. In order for this place to work, only people who like the idea of it are allowed to stay. Plus you have to have passion for what you do. So I interview people and see if they’re good enough at what they do (or just like it enough) to be allowed in.

It’s totally communist. We give you everything, from food to clothes to whatever tools you need to do what you love. But not the “everyone’s the same” communist, although it’s kinda like that. It’s the “we give you stuff” communist. You ask for it, you pretty much get it, right then and there.

The point is to instill spoiled rich brat syndrome. Because then you get so bored to tears with all this stuff that it’s worthless, and the only way you get relief is by doing something productive.

That’s the idea.

Artisia’s an island in the middle of the ocean. Thankfully, it’s not going to be just an island. I was thinking of building floating platforms in the ocean. Like, you know those futuristic building concepts? I thought of it as sort of a cross between Dubai and Apple. It’s all pretty and minimalist, but still somehow totally crazy. It all looks like a real feat of architecture, especially because it’s built out in the ocean. Just floatin’ there.

There’s no religion. Not overtly, anyway. You can believe whatever you want to believe, but we generally don’t permit condemnations floating around. In fact, that might be the one thing to get you a one-way ticket out of Artisia. So no damning people.

But you can worship whoever the hell you want in your house. You can even hold little meetings if you want, I don’t care. Just don’t do it in public, and don’t start blabbering about how we’re all going to hell for cloning sheep. Because we’re going to clone the sheep anyway.

And that’s the whole point of no religion in Artisia, actually. The sheep. And the cloning. And all those other scientific neat things we don’t do because they’re “immoral.” We’re looking for aliens, researching stem cells, and cloning sheep.

It’s nice here because we get to progress. Flow states are neat and all, but to get into flow, you need a goal. And for Artisia, that goal is progress. Ultimately, living forever and being able to observe anything. That’s the idea. Scary, but hey, we have a long time to do it. Forever, in fact.

We can do whatever we want, basically. Synthesize anything, manipulate everything. One of my favorite ideas was creating forests. We would engineer the soil ourselves and just plant trees, and voila! Instant forest.

And we could even clone little bunny rabbits and deer and stuff to put in there. So peaceful and fairy tale-like.

Artisia doesn’t have any money. Since there’s not much to trade it for, there’s really no need. Instead, you have a little card with your ID in it, and you swipe it to do everything.

I was thinking of having the transport be these little tubes, or maybe a highway, it wouldn’t matter. Because the transportation would be these little shiny white pods with no windows. And they’d probably be driven by magnets like that one superfast train that I can’t remember anything else about. But there are seats inside, and a table, and there’s a touchscreen embedded on the inside of the door so you can play party games or something while you’re going somewhere.

Anyway, to call one up, you punch in however many people are going to be in one (there are different types and sizes and stuff), then you tell it where you want to go, then you all swipe your cards. Zoom, instant pod appearance thingy.

So, say you’re a painter, and you think painting is awesome. But you’ve just run out of oh-god-my-eyes-burn yellow, and you kind of need it for this super-crazy retina-exploding pop art painting, because you think you’re the Artisian Andy Warhol. So off you go in your little pod to the Artisian market. You grab a nice big tube of oh-god-my-eyes-burn yellow and a grapefruit, and make your way to the door. An archway thingy you walk through scans little electronic bits embedded in the stickers (shut up, I’m still working on this), and beeps. You swipe your card and you’re on your merry little way off to destroy someone’s eyesight.

But what’s really neat is that you can visit Artisia even if you don’t live here. All you have to do is go and sign up for a card on the internet. Ahh, the internet. You give us your name, address, credit card number, etc., and we send you a card. The card itself doesn’t really cost anything, but when you want to come to Artisia, you just let us know and we’ll send this bitchin’ plane to the airport nearest you and pick you (and a few others, probably) up and take you here.

And then the fun begins.

Since you don’t live in Artisia, you have a little thing in your card that says you’re a tourist, which means you have to pay for stuff. So you swipe your card to stay in the hotel (paid per night), swipe your card to enter a restaurant (you only pay for what the raw food costs), and swipe your card for transportation (finally, something free…).

You can pick up trinkets and stuff, but all that goes on your card, and you have to pay for some of it when you leave (again, raw materials), but we’ll always tell you how much it costs before you pick it up. So no nasty surprises.

If you’re visiting family or friends, and they let you stay in their house (or you beg and plead with some random stranger because you don’t want to stay in a hotel–which doesn’t make sense because the hotels are cheap and really nice), you don’t have to pay to stay there. But you still have to pay for your food and everything.

And that’s the beauty of it. You can stay in Artisia as long as you want provided you keep paying. If you don’t want to keep paying, you can apply to become a resident, but you’re subject to all the usual waiting times, since there are only a handful of us approving people.

If you’re wandering around with no place to stay, Artisian officers will ask for your card. And if they find you’re not a resident, you’ll have to leave unless you find some place to stay.

It’s a bit more complicated than that, but I can’t remember any of it right now. So basically, that’s Artisia. It’s a great place, I think, but I don’t yet know if it’s practical.

Ideas? Like it? Hate it? Is it possible? Would you live here if you could?

P.S. This is not a fantasy. This is not just a stray idea that I thought I would share. This is a country I’ve wanted since its inception about a year ago.

If you want a place like this, I want you to help me build it.

/<3

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