Synaptic Echoes is an interactive installation that examines how bodily presence and temporal interaction shape co-creative behaviour within a sensor-based technical system. Grounded in affect theory, embodied interaction, and research-creation, the project investigates how gesture, proximity, and touch generate multisensory responses across sound, light, and material form. Rather than treating technology as a reactive tool, the installation operates as a relational ecology: an environment that senses, registers, and adapts through encounters with multiple bodies.
Drawing on Erin Manning’s concepts of attunement and the minor gesture, and Gilbert Simondon’s account of technical individuation, the project reframes agency as distributed and emergent through encounter. A three-layer memory model- immediate response, temporal echo, and long-term trace- structures the system’s behaviour, enabling prior interactions to persist and shape future ones.
Participant movement is captured through depth sensors, pressure interfaces, and gestural tracking systems. These inputs are processed through TouchDesigner, where they are integrated and translated into evolving audiovisual phenomena that unfold over time.
The project follows a research-creation methodology grounded in iterative prototyping, reflective analysis, and material experimentation. Prototypes such as tactile sensor objects and Kinect-based visual systems function as sites of inquiry into attunement, embodied agency, and co-presence. Through iterative cycles of making and reflection, the project moves from object-centered interaction toward spatial, collective mode of co-creation.
Ultimately, Synaptic Echoes asks how a technical system might not only respond to participants but also retain traces of their presence, cultivating an environment in which human and technical processes become attuned through shared gestures, accumulated memory, and affect unfolding over time.

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