004 ⥄ in the signal path

⟿ touchdesigner, installation, performance ↭ 2025

in the signal path is a performance installation that explores memory, observability, and interaction. A series of video clips from late-1990s Sri Lanka, fragments from my childhood, form the visual basis of the work. These clips are not presented for direct viewing. Instead, they function as peripheral signals, loosely representing memories that are vivid in feeling but vague in detail.

A Tobii eye tracker monitors the viewer’s gaze. When a viewer looks directly at one of the videos, it becomes obscured and overwritten by live ASCII-based distortion. The system denies the act of direct observation, forcing the viewer into a peripheral engagement with the past.

Over the video matrix a particle system operates autonomously within the installation. It analyzes brightness and motion across the video clips, and continuously drifts toward the most interesting clip. Without human observation the system moves at its own rhythm.

But when human sight is reintroduced, the system becomes unstable. Gaze interrupts the particle logic. The most interesting clip, now watched directly by both the viewer and the system, becomes hidden. This introduces an instable disturbance into the feedback loop causing visual chaos for both observers.

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