Why I am on Steemit and using Steem

_{Digital Self}

How did I get here?

I hope that this post will explain how I found Steemit and Steem. I also hope to find some answers and ideas to help me with micropayments. I think that perhaps Steemit, Steem and Dlive are answers to my prayers (so to speak). I needed a ecosystem that allowed for the ordering and payment of goods in small amounts without transaction fees.

I searched all sorts of cryptocurrency and then found Steemit and Steem.

Why am I here?

Well I was building my interactive artwork called Soul Scroll / Holy Roller and I wanted a way for viewers of the art piece to order prayers for very small amounts of money. It is an interactive electronic sculpture based on a prayer machine in "The Handmaids Tail" by Margaret Atwood. Characters in the book order prayers for a fee per prayer via a smartphone and this prints them and reads them out loud. A complication is that no women are allowed to read so the system works without the printed word.

This is the concept for Soul Scroll

This is the Soul Scroll in action.

The work generates prayers that are in the language they use in the book. A sort of dystopian corrupted form of Christianity based on tenants of Health and Wealth and the Quiverfull movement.

Steem Answers

I currently have the artwork running on Twitter under the handle @SoulScroll1 for no charge. So far only one person has interacted with it.

The next step I wish to take is to connect the Soul Scroll up to the Steem network so people can order prayers for a small amount of SBD or Steem. I am trying to figure out the best way for people to order a prayer and to receive the prayer.

One issue is that the ordering of prayers in the book are based on a numbering system because the women are not allowed to read so 1 is Health, 2 is Wealth, 3 is A death, 4 is a birth and 6 is sin. In the twitter version I made I am using emoji. Health - 🏥 Wealth - 💰 A death - ☠️ A birth - 👶 Sin - 👿. Not sure the memo field in a transaction will take an emoji.

Is this the best option, to have people use the transaction in their wallet to send a dollar amount and instructions in the memo?

I am proposing that the delivery be a live stream on Dlive. So the viewer would order a prayer using a transfer with a number in the memo field. How do I send them a link back to view their prayer being read on Dlive? If they sent a link to a post I could add the link as a comment on their post. Of course all the prayers being read would be publicly viewable also.

Another option I was thinking of building was a completely custom application or smartphone app where people could login using their Steemit account and they could order prayers through it. It would only allow them to select a prayer type and how many they want. Then it could deliver a video of their prayer back to the application.

Micropayments

I have another idea for a micropayment smartphone application to help with tipping people when you do not have any small bills. Some sort of online store for selling digital art delivered electronically would be interesting to develop also.

Feedback

Please give me some feedback as I am still exploring the possibilities of Steem. I have lots of my artwork already documented on my feed so come take a look.

Questions

Is there already a Steem payment app that lets people exchange goods or work for Steem?
What is the best api to use to exchange money and "deliver" electronic goods?
Is it Steem-python or Steem-js or something else?

Thanks for your help.