The confessional machine at Sehsüchte Festival
How Liza Abramishvili and Dachy Yu collaborated to turn a film festival audience into the work itself
Meet Visual Effects, Video Game & Digital Arts student Liza Abramishvili and Music & Sound Design for Visual Media student Dachy Yu. Both in their third year, their ambitions are already reaching beyond Catalyst. At Sehsüchte 53rd International Student Film Festival in Potsdam, they presented an installation that flips the usual dynamic – it observed the observers. "Somewhere Inside the Machine There Is a Face That Looks Like You" captured visitors through a live camera and microphone, then fed their image and voice back through a system of latency and distortion until the reflection stopped resembling them. We spoke to Liza about the collaboration, the process behind the work, and what she's building next.
Photos by Liza Abramishvili
What is "Somewhere Inside the Machine There Is a Face That Looks Like You"?
We are Liza Abramishvili and Dachy Yu, Berlin-based artists working across installation, moving image, sound, and interactive media.
Our installation, “Somewhere Inside the Machine There Is a Face That Looks Like You”, explored the moment where technology stops simply observing people and begins to internalize them. In the work, visitors entered a darkened room where a camera and microphone captured their presence and fed it through a live audiovisual feedback system. Their image slowly drifted out of sync through latency, distortion, light, and sound, creating something that felt less like a portrait and more like a digital residue.
Why did you choose to present the work at Sehsüchte?
Sehsüchte is an international student film festival in Potsdam focused on emerging filmmakers and interdisciplinary media practices. What interested us was that the festival creates space not only for traditional cinema, but also for experimental installation, audiovisual work, and hybrid formats that exist between film, technology, and performance.
Presenting this work at Sehsüchte felt especially relevant because the project exists between cinematic language and physical experience. Instead of watching a narrative unfold on screen, visitors became part of the system itself. The festival context also allowed us to observe how audiences reacted emotionally to being confronted with altered versions of their own image and voice.
How did you two work together, and what would you do differently?
The collaborative process was very fluid and intuitive. Rather than separating strict creative roles, we developed the installation through constant experimentation with sound, visuals, timing, and physical space. Many important decisions emerged directly during setup and testing.
One of the highlights was seeing how differently people interacted with the work. Some participants approached it playfully, while others treated the microphone almost like a confessional space. The installation became less about technology itself and more about vulnerability, hesitation, and the strange desire to be recognized by a machine.
The biggest challenge was balancing technical precision with atmosphere. Because the installation relied on live feedback, latency, and reactive audiovisual systems, even small technical adjustments completely changed the emotional feeling of the space. Working within a festival setup schedule also meant adapting quickly and embracing unpredictability.
If we were to continue the project, we would definitely keep the experimental and process-driven way of working. At the same time, we would likely expand the spatial and sculptural aspects of the installation further, since we became increasingly interested in how the audience physically moved through the environment and performed for the machine.
