Simulated Consensus

How will you manipulate the public? 

Public opinion has long been forecast. With the aid of AI, it is now easier than ever before to use population data to build specific and highly accurate voting simulations with digital citizens. A public consensus can be simulated and manipulated before the vote even begins.  

You are now the Operator, in a fictional government facility where you are tasked with manipulating public opinion. Using a series of simulated voting scenarios, you will work with an AI Handler to guide the outcome towards a pre-determined sinister option. Put on the headphones and respond to the Handler to accept your mission. 

Will the simulated citizens realise what you are doing? 

BIOGRAPHY

Ryuta Aoki (JPN) is a Tokyo-based artist and artistic director working across art, technoscience, and social sculpture. His practice treats computation not simply as a digital technique, but as a cultural, ecological, and political force — a way of seeing that shapes how societies imagine nature, agency, and the future.  

CREDITS 

Artist: Ryuta Aoki  

Production: VOLOCITEE Inc.  

Console Technical Design and Production: Jack Farley, Louis Kennedy, James Paul 

Original holographic version developed with the support of the ACC CREATORS Residency 2024 at the National Asia Culture Center (ACC), Gwangju, Republic of Korea, where it was first presented. Console version newly developed for and first presented at Science Gallery Melbourne, EMERGENCE(Y), 2026. 

Photography credit: Phoebe Powell

SHELLEY Matulick