Is the phone in your pocket feeling heavy? Do we need more creative ways to escape the doom-scroll? Focusing on interactive games, play and technology, our next exhibition explores the ways we might harness the cacophony of digital content and find meaning within it.

*Deviation Game ver 1.0* by Tomo Kihara + Playfool (Daniel Coppen &Saki Maruyama) at Civic Creative Base Tokyo, 2023. Photography: Aya Kawachi / Tada (YUKAI)

Opening in July 2025, DISTRACTION highlights the powerful forces that lure us to escape from the everyday, and asks how much of what distracts us is real, and what might we be missing in the process?

Dr Ryan Jefferies, Director of Science Gallery at the University of Melbourne, says the art/science projects included in this exhibition reflect on the myriad ways our attention is harnessed.

“We are all aware of the constant push and pull for our attention. In the age of digital distraction. information overload, misinformation, doom-scrolling and rising rates of ADHD are the new normal, so how do we stay-focused, filter-out or switch-off in an ever-growing global attention economy. DISTRACTION shines a playful light on how humans are navigating our relationship with technology, exploring escapism and finding time for ourselves.”

Highlights include:

US artist, humorist and founder of the Institute For Comedic Inquiry, Laura Allcorn’s Pledge Drive for Attention invites visitors to enter into a comedic set based on a televised pledge drive, to explore how our attention spans are being zapped by digital distractions, and to encourage stealing back lost hours. Allcorn, who will visit Melbourne for the exhibition launch, has developed the project with psychologist Gloria Mark, in collaboration with Science Gallery Melbourne’s Sci Curious group. Allcorn’s work explores the societal effects of emerging technologies.
Naarm/Melbourne artist Xanthe Dobbie’s Unoriginal_Sin draws on the concept of ‘mean images’ coined by artist Hito Steyerl (2023). In a new immersive video installation, Dobbie dredges the internet in an act of 'hallucinated mediocrity', which explores the mass proliferation and homogenisation of the image in the digital age.
Cat Island, by Jen Valender, merges animal colour perception research from the Stuart-Fox Lab at the University of Melbourne with technology to explore how cats on Ainoshima Island, often called "Cat Heaven Island," in Japan respond to digital stimuli, such as screen videos of their own image. Valender, born in Aotearoa New Zealand and based in Naarm/Melbourne, has filmed playful interactions with the cats, and the outcome is an interactive projection installation in gallery that audiences can engage with and alter in order to simulate ‘cat vision’.
Deviation Game, by the UK based Studio Playfool, pits human creativity against AI, inviting visitors to draw things that humans can understand but that an image-recognition AI can’t. The project reflects on Alan Turing’s 1950 Imitation Game, but uses AI not to imitate past expressions but to identify what has already been expressed, allowing one to deviate from it.
In addition, DISTRACTION features an arcade focused on games and play created in collaboration with the world’s longest running independent games organisation, Freeplay. Featuring custom arcade machines and large-scale projections, the arcade will also showcase researchers from the Melbourne Academic Games Play and Interactive Entertainment (MAGPIE) Initiative at the University of Melbourne. Visitors will have the chance to submit questions to games researchers throughout the exhibition.
Cutting-edge research from University of Melbourne will feature in the exhibition, including from the Attention Dynamics Lab, School of Culture and Communication and School of Computer Information Systems. And in a first for the gallery, researchers from the SWISP Lab (Faculty of Education) will embark on a five-month in-gallery research residency exploring the themes of attention, digital overwhelm, and planetary care, connecting with the STEM Centre of Excellence High Schools Program.
And, as part of Science Gallery Melbourne’s STEM Centre of Excellence, high school students have explored digital technologies to create playable arcade games for the general public. DISTRACTION will also launch a new in-gallery education zone - a flexible learning space for dynamic student workshops.

Exhibition curator Bern Hall says the exhibition offers hopeful perspectives in an overwhelming digital world.

“How do we let algorithms define us? And how do we showcase the creative and connective creatures that we are, beyond the fixed nature of our online identities? The exhibition highlights our incalculable capacity to surprise and invites visitors to delight in their own sense of curiosity and play. The time you spend in the exhibition is wholly your own – what do you want to do with it?”

DISTRACTION has been curated by Science Gallery’s Bern Hall and Tilly Boleyn, with input from a team of academic experts and young people, including Fetle Wondimu Nega, Cass Norland, Qian Mo Cui, Jeanette Chan, Zeth Cameron, Professor Eduard Hovy, Dr Melissa Rogerson, Dr Jasmin Pfefferkorn, Professor Katherine Johnson.

Have we got your attention? Join us to experience the playful ways we distract ourselves from the more serious parts of life.

DISTRACTION: The exhibition for your attention. Opening 26 July 2025.

Media enquiries:

Katrina Hall
+61 421 153 046
kathall@ozemail.com.au

Opening soon: DISTRACTION

Is the phone in your pocket feeling heavy? Do we need more creative ways to escape the doom-scroll? Focusing on interactive games, play and technology, our next exhibition explores the ways we might harness the cacophony of digital content and find meaning within it.