(OP)erator – ONX Seeds

The internet is becoming automated away from humans. Politically charged bots bait hollow debates, influencers inflate metrics to game algorithms, and synthetic imagery is met with synthetic approval. When every real user is outnumbered by indistinguishable bots, our voice and agency become diminished.

“(OP)erator” is an interactive sculpture that functions as a working bot farm. A large, chandelier-like structure—lined with dozens of phones—surrounds a central master “deity” device, mischievously unlocked for anyone to seize. For a brief moment, visitors can become digitally omnipotent, anonymously swaying the algorithms that curate our digital reality.

By returning the agency we have lost to an increasingly automated internet, the work asks us to contemplate the dynamics of power in our online spaces and to question the morality of the technologies that now distort what we see, say, and believe.