Hello, World Home! explores the impact of data capitalism on individual autonomy and the potential for artificial life. This speculative art project was developed during the ACC Creator 2024 Residency in Gwangju. Inspired by World ID, an art-tech enterprise exploring decentralisation by classifying entities as bio-humans and non-humans, our project aims to create a seamless identity framework without boundaries. It envisions a future recognising only these two categories, offering participants cryptocurrency rewards through retina registration as a novel incentive. Our work is influenced by World ID’s strategic approach, using speculative frameworks and nuanced terminology to promote a utopian vision for humanity’s advancement.
The residency in Gwangju, a city symbolising liberalism and democracy, takes place in the National Asia Culture Centre, a site of the historic 1980 Gwangju Uprising against military dictatorship. Meanwhile, as Koreans increasingly rely on apps like Kakao and Naver for daily activities, a new form of control emerges—not through totalitarian regimes, but through the influence of tech giants.
The project has two key components: The Transmitter, which captures visual data from the physical world and converts 120 Korean citizens as biological humans into digital entities called zombies. The Portal is a mixed-reality environment connecting the virtual and physical realms. Here, digital entities—zombie-like in their fragmented identities—exist in a liminal space, craving data as sustenance and metaphorically “feeding” on information from real humans. By using AI-driven image-to-text, text-to-3D modelling, and mixed-reality installations to visualize a world where aggregated data spawns autonomous digital entities.
It offers a critical framework for examining the ethical and philosophical questions of data capitalism, challenging our understanding of life, agency, and the human condition in a digital age. These platforms use algorithms and data-driven systems, raising questions about autonomy and freedom in the digital era.