Who Goes to the New World?
“Who Goes to the New World?” is an interactive artwork presented as both an online system and a physical installation. It explores the intersection of historical imagination and contemporary algorithmic structures. Participants encounter emojis stripped to three attributes—gender, race, and age—and must make thirteen binary choices to determine who survives the “New World Ark.”
The system functions as an extreme ethical field, continuously aggregating individual judgments and visualizing the formation of collective outcomes in real time: high-vote emojis occupy the center-privileged positions, while low-vote emojis are pushed to the margins as losers. By materializing the transformation from dispersed judgment to statistical hierarchy, the work reveals how latent social biases are amplified within seemingly democratic and fair statistical processes.
Responding directly to the AI industry’s rhetoric of “participatory alignment”—where public input is invoked to legitimize model behavior—the work demonstrates that participation alone does not guarantee fairness; it can equally solidify structural bias. The project prompts reflection on the deep connections among collective decision-making, value prioritization, and social division.
Statistical Legitimacy & Structural Critique
The work introduces the concept of “Statistical Legitimacy” to describe a techno-political condition in which collective outcomes are considered valid not because they are deliberated or justified, but because they are statistically aggregated. Legitimacy shifts from public reasoning to procedural computation.
The Physical Installation
The physical version of the work adopts a form resembling a game terminal. It does not alter the algorithmic logic but changes how participation is staged. Its simplified structure and direct input lower the threshold of engagement, making participation appear easy and immediate. Yet beneath this form, individual choices are rapidly absorbed into the overall ranking. Selection no longer remains at the level of personal opinion; it is immediately translated into a measurable unit within a concrete machine, turning judgment into an executed operation.