Ziyao Lin

How Not To Be Invisible is an interactive installation that examines how contemporary systems of scoring shape visibility, access and social value.

Across education, employment, welfare allocation and digital platforms, individuals are continuously evaluated, ranked and filtered. These scoring mechanisms do not merely measure performance. They structure access to space, opportunity and recognition. Visibility itself becomes a conditional outcome of evaluation.

The installation translates this structural logic into an experiential environment. Participants enter a space populated by symbolic objects representing different forms of capital. They are informed that their “visibility score” will be calculated based on what they collect. Without clear guidance, hierarchy or explanation, participants must decide which objects are worth accumulating. Their score determines which spatial outcome they are permitted to access.

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The result is binary. A score above a defined threshold leads to a celebratory and amplified environment. A score below the threshold leads to a muted and diminished space. The mechanism mirrors real-world systems in which complex lives are reduced to numerical thresholds, and acceptance or exclusion becomes automated.

In doing so, the project contributes to ongoing debates about algorithmic governance, institutional evaluation and the politics of recognition. It proposes artistic practice as a method for making abstract mechanisms perceptible and contestable.