Algorithmic Panopticon

Six screens in a circle, and you are standing in the middle.

Algorithmic Panopticon is a large-scale video and sound installation spanning 22 metres. It was made in collaboration with students, educators, and citizens, and puts a direct question at its centre: how will artificial intelligence change the work of teachers, nurses, and midwives? The installation surrounds visitors with machine-generated imagery and sound, creating an environment in which the question of surveillance. Who watches, who is watched, and who decides?

We built the installation around a six-screen cylindrical display running a single browser session across the full combined resolution. The browser connects over WebSocket to a Python backend that manages a queue of tasks and controls what is shown on each part of the installation at any given time.

The imagery is generated using Stable Diffusion running locally. Visitors initiate the work by photographing themselves on a connected device; that photograph is sent to the backend and passed through a sequence of image-to-image transformations at increasing diffusion strengths but with a fixed random seed. Each step using the previous output as its input. The resulting frames are assembled into a morphing video. A pre-generated artwork video plays continuously between interactions, with the backend timing the transition so new participant content is queued and displayed only when the previous artwork cycle has finished.

Supported by Det Obelske Familiefond