New Rousseau Machine

If the rules for aggregating voting results change, the final outcomes may also change, meaning different public opinions can coexist simultaneously. If the way we interact with these changes, it could transform the world. Here, this is referred to as the “Schrodinger’s cat” phenomenon of public opinion. “New Rousseau Machine” challenges the importance and dangers of the tools that support democracy, even before considering public opinion or the voting subject.

Using the next-generation governance system known as the ‘New Rousseau Machine’ (NRM), the installation showcases the results of voting experiments conducted by ten volunteers including artists, researchers, architects, and citizens. These participants voted on three agendas, each with three options, illustrating the 27 possible choices or ‘world lines’. The selected world lines for each of the four aggregation rules are simultaneously represented using construction site materials such as leveling strings, screws, temporary fences, and label tapes, symbolizing public works.

Developed by the research collective ‘METACITY’, which explores possible urban forms, NRM is a blockchain-based system designed for an art project aimed at creating the fictional administrative district ‘Multi-layered City “Makuhari City”’. It allows for the selection of various aggregation rules and decision-making processes, including liquid democracy, and can incorporate ‘will’ from non-human sources such as AI and nature.

Each circle in the installation is made up of a central screw representing the selected outcome for an agenda, surrounded by ten screws depicting the voters. These circles are arranged radiantly from the center, with the second layer showing the results of the first agenda, the third layer the second, and the fourth layer (outermost) the third. The colored plumb lines—orange for direct democracy (majority rule), green for direct democracy (Borda), pink for indirect democracy, and yellow for liquid democracy—each represent different aggregation rules. The meaning of each line varies with the rule, but the option with the most lines in each becomes the ultimately chosen world line.