Neo Ferro-Mýrmēx Economy

Neo Ferro-Mýrmex Economy is a speculative interactive installation that stages a living ecosystem of ant-colony-shaped glass membranes filled with ferrofluid. Audience labour (physical inputs of speed, time, and distance) modulates electromagnetic fields and fluid dynamics, generating Rosensweig instabilities that rise and collapse like unstable towers. A Markov-chain feedback loop, augmented by Monte Carlo simulations, converts this labour into entropy that either accumulates internally or is offloaded to simulated AI data centers. The work treats probabilistic systems as xenogeneic agents that reconfigure labour relations, distributing and contesting agency across bodies, materials, algorithms, and infrastructures. Participants exercise limited agency through exertion, yet their effort is absorbed into a technofeudal feedback loop that mirrors cloud serfdom and optimization regimes. By making the redistribution of agency visible and visceral, the installation reveals hidden agencies within AI infrastructures and asks what residual, negotiated, or more-than-human forms of agency remain possible amid accelerating computational power.