UK-born, Seattle-based artist James Coupe fuses surveillance technology and social media in his new, J.G. Ballard-inspired installation.

James Coupe's highly unusual practice combines elements of contemporary industrial surveillance and the darker side of social media. In Swarm, he riffs on the social paranoia undulating through David Cronenberg's cinema and, in particular, the shifts in personal identity brought about by new technology in his films. Coupe has created a staged area within the gallery to capture the surface identities of visitors, processing their "look" through social media algorithms, and assigning them various "clan allegiances" — a reference to JG Ballard's High Rise. The images are re-channeled onto monitors, showing the gallery as if it were exclusively occupied by specific demographics of people. In Coupe's terrifying universe, visitors will "see the clans occupying the museum, proliferating in number, assembling and dispersing: a community that appears to be waiting for something to happen, but in fact dramatically demonstrates how social media technologies involve a redistribution of identities based upon principles of demographic segmentation, social exclusivity, and the illusion of community."

Presented and organized in partnership with MOCCA, 952 Queen Street West. Runs daily, September 5 to 15. Exhibition continues until December 29, 2013.