“Situational Compliance” is an interactive installation conceived as a “Simon Says”-style game. Using computer vision and pose detection, a machine issues commands—raise your arms, show your hands, kneel—and assesses each body as either obedient or threatening.

Exposed cables, cameras, and a real-time visualization of the digital skeleton reveal the system’s inner workings. Unlike most works on surveillance, which merely record our movements, this installation issues commands: it does not archive what you have done; it dictates what you must do at that moment.

Participants navigate the tension between play and obedience, discovering just how far we are willing to go to follow the instructions of a faceless, bodiless authority with whom it is impossible to argue.

This piece was created with the support of Mois Multi/Mutek.

Matthew Biederman is an artist working since the mid-1990s at the intersection of electromagnetic infrastructure, AI development, and speculative inquiry.

His practice spans installation, performance, and custom tool-building — from the Office of Spectral Ecology, an investigation into public rights within the spectrum, to torch-bending, a technique developed with IRCAM Paris for intervening in AI model weights as a form of circuit-bending.

He co-founded the Arctic Perspective Initiative with Marko Peljhan, a long-term project working with open-source technological infrastructures and architectures throughout the circumpolar region. He collaborates extensively with composer, artist, and researcher Pierce Warnecke on audiovisual work presented at IRCAM, Sonic Acts, Skanu Mezs, and LEV Festival.

His work, performances, and collaborations have been presented at Ars Electronica, Elektra, Lyon Biennale, MAXXI Rome, Istanbul Design Biennale, Tokyo Museum of Photography, and MUTEK among many others. He lives and works in Montreal, Quebec.

Tuesday through Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.

The installation will remain open to the public at MUZEU until November 29