Video Award | Signal/Void by Substance Wins 2017 GlobalTrend Awards

Another Version of Reality

Signal/Void by Substance Australia wins the Video Award in the 2017 GlobalTrend Awards. This video production receives the Triumph Award for their unique video concept.

Signal/Void is a meditation on the hidden architectures of our digital lives—networks we willingly join and others that operate in the shadows. In a world where participation is constant and often unconscious, this work explores how our identities are shaped, stored, and manipulated through systems designed not only to connect but to contain.

These mechanisms, driven by algorithms and profit, flood us with signals—stories curated to resonate with our personal hopes, fears, and aspirations. In return, we give up fragments of ourselves, producing data that reinforces the cycle. What appears as infinite connectivity is also a narrowing void, where reality is tailored, quantified, and sold back to us in increasingly personal terms.

Signal/Void questions what is left of the self in the age of the feed. It examines the invisible infrastructure behind the illusion of choice, and challenges the viewer to confront their own complicity within these systems. Where does agency begin, and where does it dissolve into signal?