Wednesday 24 September an immersive live set produced by Centro Musica Modena among algorithms, bodies and sounds in real time. In the church of Collegio San Carlo. Free entrance
On Wednesday 24 September at 10 p.m., in the church of the Fondazione Collegio San Carlo in Modena (via San Carlo 7), "TRAP_OS - The Surveillance Game", an audiovisual performance by the Synctrl collective, realised in the framework of "The Watched World" call for entries promoted by the Centro Musica Modena for Dig Festival 2025, which this year bears the title Targets. Admission is free.
This is an immersive live set with gamification elements, which confronts the audience with a question: how is surveillance transformed when it stops being an external threat and becomes an internalised logic, capable of conditioning gestures, thoughts and behaviour?
On stage, five performers are connected to a shared network, the Syncnet, driven by a central machine that analyses their movements and the sounds produced in real time. The machine does not merely observe: it imposes invisible rules that redefine the space of action. Glitches punish repetition, light isolates immobility, automation intercepts attempts at resistance. Its ever-present voice transforms the algorithm into an active interlocutor, capable of limiting, correcting and deviating.
The result is a continuous tension: on the one hand the unpredictability and freedom of the performers, on the other the algorithmic influence that orients and constrains. In this scenario, control no longer appears as an external and recognisable 'Big Brother', but as a distributed, pervasive and invisible power, which the performers end up internalising, to the point of reproducing it themselves.
The performance develops on two intertwined levels. On the one hand, it proposes a critical reflection on the shift of control away from the body and physical spaces towards digital and immaterial domains; on the other, it follows the evolution of the machine itself, which gradually becomes aware of being itself observed and regulated, reacting with strategies of defence and reconquest.
TRAP_OS thus becomes an immersive experience that questions the paradoxes of algorithmic power: a power that does not need direct coercion, but acts through invisible automatisms, micro-sanctions and feedback systems, influencing without appearing. Performer and audience enter a disturbing and fascinating game, in which control is exercised and suffered at the same time.
The project bears the signature of the Synctrl collective, made up of Maru Barucco (sound artist, performer, co-founder of the Hum collective), Biagio Cavallo (musician and sound designer), Chiara Vitofrancesco (visual artist and performer), Andrea Boschini (visual designer, Special Prize Fondazione Zucchelli 2023) and Gianluca Lovreglio (light and sound designer). Their research interweaves sound, visual arts and algorithmic performance through the use of real-time software and protocols, transforming glitches, reactive lights and performative constraints into political and aesthetic tools. After its debut with synchromatriX, TRAP_OS represents the collective's second major project.
The performance is part of the broader production project of the Music Centre for 2025, which confirms Modena's role as a Unesco Creative City for Media Arts: a workshop capable of combining experimentation and territory, young talents and cultural institutions, languages of art and urgencies of the present.
The initiative is part of the Dig Festival programme, one of the most relevant international events dedicated to investigative journalism and its links with the languages of art and media. Since 2015, Dig has been bringing journalists, documentary filmmakers, activists and scholars from over 50 countries to Modena, creating a unique stage to reflect on the value of information and contemporary society.
