In parts of 5
The number 5 has many meanings behind it. The reason we chose this as the segments we do (5000 Seeds, batches of 50) is because it represents being in the hard middle of the journey.
In tarot, 5 represents change, conflicting emotions, difficult positions to be in. It reflects our internal battle regarding commercializing our work. Whenever you get any 5 card in the Minor Arcana, it signifies a challenge or a threshold: you are in this position, so what do you choose next? To move forward, or fall back?
In numerology, it represents a person and each point the body usually has: the head, our two hands, and two feet. Each hand and foot itself has five digits, allowing us to grip objects properly. We also have our the five senses that allow us to experience the material world.
As a destiny number, it represents freedom, adventure, and versatility. People who have this as Life Path number are travellers and communicators. They can be described as "wild", making discipline and patience a challenge for them. Fitting for the Balay as an idea born from an urban and capitalist structure, yet learning the return to the more organic and freeform.
Originally, the campaigns were made with 4s to represent stability (as with the 4 limbs on a person or 4 sides on squares), but decided against it since the number represents death or misfortune in Northeast Asian cultures.
We feel very viscerally how we are in the painful middle. The idea has materialized, but it is still a sapling. E-commerce methods teach us that we must induce an urgency for people to feel compelled. It introduces scarcity, thus creating tension within a person to make an emotional purchase. This is why impulse buying exists, even though the object itself is not a necessity at all. It keeps people consumers, which we do not wish for our audience.
At the same time, the value of our offerings are rare in themselves. The projects that are born from this endeavor are responses to our own personal struggles regarding questions of identity in the globalized era, and lack of tangible financial support for artistic pursuits.
To make this big little dream a reality, we must create based on the system we find ourselves in. Being a bridge between the two terminals of slow living versus urban hyperspeed is no easy feat. Anything that happens in the gap of the bridge could collapse the connection, so we must engineer properly.
We accept the difficult position of 5, and are working hard towards completion.
