Ars Electronica Features Exhibition
3 — 7 September 202
POSTCITY, First Floor Waldeggstraße 41,4020 Linz
Link to tickets
For more information, contact projects@serial.sg
3 — 7 September 202
POSTCITY, First Floor Waldeggstraße 41,4020 Linz
Link to tickets
For more information, contact projects@serial.sg
On Point interrogates humanity’s urge to make things immediately intelligible. Faced with today’s polycrises, we often oversimplify and overcategorise—approaches that work against deeper understanding and problem‑solving. These impulses are rooted in uncertainty and can lead to panic and desire for control that ultimately “miss the point”.
The exhibition features darkmode/lightmode by artist Victoria Hertel with engineer Justin Ong. The work’s irregular flickering patterns resist predictable rhythms, echoing the often unseen interconnectedness of contemporary crises. Like a flickering lightbulb, the rhythmic pulses reveal a web of connections powered by interdependent presence and actions. Just as their full communicative pattern reveals itself over time, global problems too require patient observation over quick fixes or expectations of immediate understanding. This dynamic contrasts society’s fixation on fragmented elements and hopes to nurture sensitivity to critical signals rather than panicked reactions in order to guide us through uncertain futures.
Curated by Shireen Marican
Produced by Mary Ann Ng
The exhibition features darkmode/lightmode by artist Victoria Hertel with engineer Justin Ong. The work’s irregular flickering patterns resist predictable rhythms, echoing the often unseen interconnectedness of contemporary crises. Like a flickering lightbulb, the rhythmic pulses reveal a web of connections powered by interdependent presence and actions. Just as their full communicative pattern reveals itself over time, global problems too require patient observation over quick fixes or expectations of immediate understanding. This dynamic contrasts society’s fixation on fragmented elements and hopes to nurture sensitivity to critical signals rather than panicked reactions in order to guide us through uncertain futures.
Curated by Shireen Marican
Produced by Mary Ann Ng
darkmode/lightmode (2025)
Victoria Hertel with Justin Ong
Iron oxide infused glass vessels, radar sensors, custom printed circuit boards, LED filaments, vibration motors, sound waves, water, currents
Dimensions variable
darkmode/lightmode explores how technology perceives and responds to environments through sensors. Contrasting human and technological sensing, the work prompts interactions between bodies, spaces, and other presences. Switching states in response to environmental stimuli, the work consists of two co‑existing interfaces: one activated by presence, engaging in a communicative act of mutual sensing; the other triggered by absence, shifting into a state of auto‑responsive rhythms and internal logics across the vessel network, asserting a form of circuit‑driven agency. Sensing becomes a shared, slowed, and communicative act, forming a moment of awareness across biological, spatial, and technological networks.