Synthetic Sirens

What happens to us as humans — our shared humanity — living in algorithmic societies?

Synthetic Sirens surrounds visitors with floor-to-ceiling projections that respond to the bodies moving through the space. At the centre stands a ring light: the tool of the influencer, the symbol of the creator economy. The system watches. The walls respond. The sirens sing.

As you enter the installation, you are emersed in a audio-visual dopamine inducing overload. A cacophony of smartphone notification flow from the 12-channel audio track and the walls are filled with videos from the feed.

Throughout the length of the work, the sirens talk to you though the 12-channel audio work. Luring you further and further into the feed - getting you into a trance of doomscrolling.

The work is a 7 minute loop that will run whether or not there is audience interaction, but when the audience step in front of the depth camera, they will be transported into the work - Projected into the feed. They will be recorded and be there, in the feed, with the next audience member that interact.

The operational core is a custom show control system built inside TouchDesigner. The system is a combination of a looping timeline component and a OP preset system allowing us both flexibility in the setup and deterministic behaviour for the duration of the exhibition.

The visual output runs in Unreal Engine, which gave us the rendering quality a space this scale demanded. TouchDesigner acts as the connective tissue — routing sensing data into physics, physics into rendering, keeping everything synchronised and running unattended across a seven-month exhibition run.

Shown at MSU Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, January – July 2026.