Jieying Wang

This interactive installation stages a dialogue between humans and machines, built not through language but through traces of behaviour. The work asks how our non-conscious gestures—hesitation, silence, small movements—are constantly read and redefined by digital systems.

Three sensors structure this dialogue: an infrared sensor for vision, an accelerometer for movement, and a microphone for sound. Each captures fragments of audience presence and translates them into machine-terminal statements: the system sees / feels / listens your hesitation as consent > ingestion pending. These phrases mimic the calm authority of a command-line interface, turning hesitation—a human state of doubt—into absolute agreement.

The captured traces do not remain abstract. They flow into an intestine-shaped visual system that fills, contracts, and eventually releases. When the system decides the moment of expulsion, a thermal printer produces strips of “digital excrement”: fragile residues of behaviour materialised as data waste. Here, excretion is not mere disposal but a systemic redistribution—the invisible made visible, stripped of ownership, and returned as estranged matter.

By simulating capture, retention, and expulsion, the installation mirrors the metabolic cycle of digital platforms. It reveals how everyday gestures are taken up as resources beyond our control, and asks: when machines listen, see, and feel us in ways we cannot notice, who owns the dialogue, and who speaks on our behalf?