Overload

Overload is my bachelor project in Digital Media and Experiment at HSBI Bielefeld. It translates the overstimulation of contemporary media (scrolling, swiping, notifications, auto-play) into a physical space you can step into.

Sixteen LED fixtures hang on a six-metre steel ring that encloses the audience on three sides. Instead of images, the installation works with raw stimuli: light and sound. A state machine runs through a library of patterns such as heartbeat, swipe, scroll tunnel, notification storm, glitch, strobe overload, breathing and shutdown, and slowly escalates in intensity until the system collapses into silence.

The sound is built from self-recorded media sounds like interface clicks, notification tones, console and computer noises. It moves spatially around the ring, so light and sound always come from the same direction. Everything is controlled from a single TouchDesigner system for frame-accurate sync.