Projects

Three people sit on a stage facing a screen, there are objects on tables in the foreground below the stage, and the scene is lit in red and green. Three people sit on a stage facing a screen, there are objects on tables in the foreground below the stage, and the scene is lit in red and green.

Civil Signals: Finding Resonance in Noise

Civil Signals: Finding Resonance in Noise

Civil Signals is an immersive social instrument that transforms participants’ shared physiological noise, blood flow, skin moisture and movement, into moments of audiovisual and haptic resonance, revealing how collective ritual can generate felt togetherness in fragmented digital spaces.

Building on previous projects Muxed Messages and Hemodynamic Disco, Civil Signals is an immersive artwork exploring how groups can feel more connected by navigating noise together through shared bodily rhythms.

Rooted in the idea of collective effervescence - the heightened sense of unity that can emerge during shared ritual - the work invites participants to influence a responsive audiovisual environment through simple collective actions such as clapping, stepping and stillness.

As physiological signals begin to align, the space shifts from sensory noise into moments of visual, sonic and haptic harmony, making togetherness tangible and felt.

Experiment

£20,000

Aims of the project

Civil Signals prototypes a new kind of social instrument that transforms biometric data from individual monitoring into a shared, collective experience.

Through small-group sessions and inclusive design methods, the project explores how non-verbal interaction and responsive environments might flatten out existing bias and assumption, in order to foster better social connections in increasingly fragmented digital and social spaces.

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