Panégoptique is an interactive installation that explores the porous boundaries between human identity, machine imagination, and technological obsolescence. By algorithmically fusing the faces of participants with one another—and with synthetic topologies generated by artificial intelligence, the work proposes a speculative portrait of posthuman subjectivity. It asks what becomes of the “self” when biological traits, social traces, and computational inference become indistinguishable in the creation of new beings.
The installation takes the form of a sculptural assemblage composed of twelve repurposed iPhones. These devices, culturally deemed obsolete but still materially functional, are reanimated as sensing, imaging, and display nodes. Their presence underscores the ongoing afterlife of consumer electronics, the persistence of data infrastructures, and the symbolic weight carried by the smartphone in contemporary self-fashioning. By situating the encounter within an architecture built from discarded yet iconic technologies, Panégoptique foregrounds the tension between rapid innovation and the slow accumulation of technological remains, raising questions about permanence, disposability, and the environmental and emotional legacies of digital devices.
As visitors approach the installation, the phones detect and photograph their faces. These images are sent to the system’s computational core, where they are transformed into 3D meshes and algorithmically merged. The fusion process extracts texture, colour, and topology from each captured face, generating a hybrid portrait whose surface undulates between multiple identities. The installation exploits the liminal zone where faces are simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar: the cheekbones of one participant mapped onto the chromatic matrix of another, or the eyes of a stranger embedded within one’s own reconstructed silhouette. This unstable territory invites viewers to confront the fluidity of their own image when mediated by computational processes.
Another dimension of Panégoptique is its integration of AI-generated facial forms. These synthetic visages are woven into the merging process, entangling human physiognomies with machine-born statistical fictions. The resulting portraits are not only combinations of present participants but also manifestations of a larger algorithmic imaginary, where datasets and neural architectures contribute their own influence on the shaping of the face. In this sense, the installation stages a form of computational co-authorship: identity is no longer solely grounded in biological features or social presence but is refracted through systems that interpret, remix, and augment the human body.
Panégoptique reflects on the emergence of symbiotic imaginaries, futures in which technological systems do not simply extend human capacities but intervene in how we conceive of embodiment and relationality. The hybrid beings produced by the installation evoke both kinship and estrangement, suggesting worlds where the boundaries between human and nonhuman, organic and synthetic, corporeal and computational become increasingly permeable. These speculative portraits function as windows onto possible forms of identity shaped by algorithmic entanglement.
The installation also encourages reflection on the broader cultural conditions that frame digital selfhood. Facial detection, biometric profiling, and algorithmic classification have become pervasive infrastructures that mediate how individuals are represented and recognized. By repurposing these technologies toward the creation of ambiguous, wayward, and aesthetically unstable identities, Panégoptique destabilizes the logic of surveillance and categorization. Instead of producing certainty or verification, it generates ambiguity, multiplicity, and a sense of shared vulnerability among participants.
Ultimately, Panégoptique proposes a vision of the self as a constellation—an ever-shifting assemblage of memories, data, bodies, and computational interpretations. It positions identity not as an isolated, stable entity but as a dynamic negotiation between biological heritage, social presence, and algorithmic imagination.