When Humans Become Numbers
Kuhoo Bhatnagar
When Humans Become Numbers is a speculative, mixed media installation that interrogates how institutions weaponize data by reducing complex human lives to numbers. From SAT scores to credit ratings and risk assessments, these metrics determine your worth to society and, essentially, the trajectory of your life. But can they be trusted?
The Bureau of Statistical Worth (BSW) is a fictitious organization that operates within a dystopian world where access to resources and opportunities is entirely dependent on numbers. Inside the imposing assessment booth, disguised with welcoming signage, individuals input demographic data to receive their Total Assessed Worth Score and Official Report in real time. The experience is unsettling; although the numbers are grounded in real-world data trends, the quantification itself feels insultingly reductive. An official notice communicates the Bureau’s intent to provide an accurate measurement of individual potential. Next to it, sits the classified Employee Handbook, which reveals the Bureau’s methodology: real population data and demographic averages collapsed into predictive modeling that mistakes generalization for objectivity.
The BSW’s design utilizes two conflicting visual languages: 1) an approachable, public-facing identity that echoes values of equity and communal good, and 2) a colder, internal-facing tone that exposes the institution’s true character. This tension is reflected across a variety of mediums including an assessment index, report cards, employee handbook, bureaucratic ephemera, and the booth itself. This constructed environment simulates statistical bias for participants, encouraging them to question the Bureau and the systems it mirrors in real life.