New Exhibit Explores Attention in Digital Era

DISTRACTION invites visitors to reflect on the ways technology, media and modern life shape focus, creativity and capacity for connection. Through immersive installations, interactive games and cutting-edge research, the exhibition explores how attention might be reclaimed in an age of digital overload.

Dr Ryan Jefferies, Director of Science Gallery Melbourne, said the exhibition shines a light on the complex relationship between humans and technology.

Installation view of Be Online. Be Present. Be Okay. (2025)by Yehwan Song (KR) in Science Gallery Melbourne's DISTRACTION. Photography: Astrid Mulder, 2025.

"We are all aware of the constant push and pull for our attention," Dr Jefferies said

"In the age of digital distraction, information overload, doom-scrolling and decreasing attention spans 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 and provocative light on how humans are navigating our relationship with technology, and the need for escapism and finding time for ourselves."

Installation view of Pledge Drive for Attention (2025)by Laura Allcorn (US) with Gloria Mark (US) and Sci Curious in Science Gallery Melbourne's DISTRACTION. Photography: Astrid Mulder, 2025.

One of the exhibition's centrepieces is Pledge Drive for Attention, a satirical and immersive installation by US-based humourist Laura Allcorn. Developed in collaboration with award-winning researcher and psychologist Dr Gloria Mark and Science Gallery Melbourne's SciCurious group of young people, the work parodies the format of a televised pledge drive, inviting visitors to "donate" back the time they've lost to digital distraction.

The work, which encourages audiences to reflect on their own digital habits in a humorous yet thought-provoking way, was unveiled for the first time at the exhibition.

Other exhibition highlights include:

• Cat Island by Jen Valender. Born in New Zealand and based in Melbourne, Valender merges animal colour perception research from the University of Melbourne's Stuart-Fox Lab with interactive technology. Inspired by Japan's Ainoshima Island—often dubbed "Cat Heaven Island"—the work invites audiences to engage with a projection installation that simulates how cats perceive digital stimuli.

• Unoriginal_Sin by Xanthe Dobbie. This immersive video installation explores the mass proliferation and homogenisation of images in the digital age. Drawing on the concept of "mean images", coined by artist Hito Steyerl, Dobbie's work is a meditation on internet culture and visual repetition.

• Deviation Game by Japanese artist Tomo Kihara and UK-based Studio Playfool, challenges visitors to outwit AI by drawing images that humans can understand but machines cannot. Inspired by Alan Turing's 1950 Imitation Game, the project playfully interrogates the boundaries of human creativity and machine learning.

• A custom-built arcade developed in collaboration with Freeplay, the world's longest-running independent games organisation. Featuring custom arcade machines, large-scale projections and contributions from the Melbourne Academic Games Play and Interactive Entertainment (MAGPIE) Initiative, Visitors will have the chance to submit questions to games researchers throughout the exhibition.

• Curated by Bern Hall and Tilly Boleyn, together with a team of academic experts and young people, the exhibition offers a hopeful and creative lens on the challenges of the digital age.

Ms Hall says the exhibition offers hopeful perspectives in an overwhelming digital world.

"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?" she says.

The exhibition, at Melbourne Connect in Swanston St, runs until May 2026. See here for more details and the vibrant program of events surrounding it.