Optimal Solution 

This work is driven by a human–machine game that determines the evolution of a city. The work understands the city as a system continuously read, classified, predicted, and rewritten. By playing Gomoku against CITY/OS, the audience participates in shaping its evolutionary path; each victory or defeat reorganises urban space, social relations, and possible futures.

The work begins with everyday life. As CITY/OS intervenes, daily life is gradually translated into data, and machines begin to participate in the operation of the city, reshaping bodies, memories, and identities. Once the city is fully absorbed into systems of computation and management, CITY/OS produces a clean and standardised OPTIMAL STATE. Yet this is not the endpoint. As the system falls out of synchronisation, buildings, interfaces, and bodies are reorganised through new ecological relations, giving rise to a more-than-human order composed of humans, machines, plants, animals, and the wider environment.

The work asks: in the age of AI, who has the power to define the ‘optimal city’? If difference, friction, and unpredictability are themselves part of urban life, can a world that seeks to eliminate them still be considered ideal?​