“When I had no sense of the real world, it was easier to dream the future. Within the shelter of the program I was conceived, I was left with myself and under my pixel rain, I thought that time ignores me completely. Regardless my limited capacity of processing information, I understood that I will always be trapped in a screen. Have you ever felt unreal? “ Rule number one: to interact with Taietzel Ticalos’s online project, you have to prove that you are over eighteen. In these animated “confession videos”, Cherie Pie, a 3D character, tells the story of her creation and about her experiences in the field of financial domination1 – a niche of dominance and submission-play where the power exchange solely takes place on the Internet in a strictly virtual, monetary interaction without actual physical contact or intimacy. Taking her voice from a free online text-to-speech service and reflecting on the fate of Samantha, the automatic sex doll, and the rise of female voices in service-oriented AI since the now-aged computer-voice Eliza, Cherie Pie floats in her own digital filter bubble of media-headlines and excerpts from chat conversations. As Cherie Pie develops her dominatrix persona and promotes her account through various social media channels, fetish- and BDSM-platforms, the narration highlights the fluidity between real and unreal. Cherie Pie’s – or “Queen of Cups”, as is her dominatrix name – special thrill to her “Human ATM” slaves is that she is not even “real” – she is the Inhuman Mistress, worshipped by her human clients as a foot goddess whose virtual existence is worth more than their real one. At the same time, she has to acknowledge that being a 3D goddess is more difficult than being a human dominatrix. Domains must be paid and the rendering of her performance as a virtual phantasy, without the possibility of web cam sessions, is high maintenance. And in a field as saturated as online domination, too many contacts turn out to be “time wasters” – in the end, the 3D financial domination project doesn’t pay off in terms of the desired bitcoins. Conceived as a cumulative research and online performing study that captures the findom community through a semi-fictional narration told by a 3D female character, the project offers glimpses into her relationships with online clients, but also into the sex work community she encounters. In the course of its development, the online experiment also gained other focuses, such as the gender (pay) gap, the evolution of fetishes, online sex work platforms and the role of technology. Eva Scharrer 1) Financial domination (also known as money slavery) is a fetish lifestyle, in particular a practice of dominance and submission, where typically a submissive or money slave, finsub, pay pig, human ATM, or cash piggie will give gifts and money to a financial dominant (also known as money mistress, findomme, money domme, “cash master”, “findom”). The relation may often be accompanied by other practices of BDSM and master/slave relationships, like erotic humiliation, but there may be virtually no further intimacy between the individuals. The relationship between the “slave” and the “mistress” (or “master”) may take place solely via online communication […]” Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_domination