This talk will present In Vivo In / Vitro – Trial 1.4, an interactive installation where viewers unknowingly trigger generative imagery through subconscious blinking, rendering evolving visual content visible only to others, never to themselves. Interaction within the piece is neither prompted nor explained; instead, it must be discovered retroactively, reframing participation as a latent, physiological condition. This installation challenges normative assumptions about seamless interaction, authorship, and legibility, constructing a relational system in which perception, agency, and visibility are unevenly distributed among viewer, machine, and observer.
Rooted in k0j0’s (Koi Ren and Joey Verbeke) research into subversive “intrafaces,” interfaces that reveal the power, politics, and posthuman subjectivities embedded within systemic interactions, the artists developed the concept of unconscious friction: the temporal gap between action and awareness, where meaning emerges from epistemic rupture rather than intentional control. Leveraging computational imperceptibility through physiological triggering, the piece situates blinking, a non-volitional bodily reflex, as a hidden, yet critical site of interaction. As participants transition from passive observers to critical interpreters, the work reveals the interface as contingent and constructed, prompting reflection on the invisible dynamics of algorithmic systems, relational asymmetry, and posthuman subjectivities embedded within everyday interactions.