ghost_control is the fourth iteration of the ghost_projects series (2024–present).
ghost_projects investigates the hidden algorithms shaping everyday life in the age of the internet.
Earlier works include:
In Ghost_Control2026, a crate-like structure contains a work-from-home environment setup with screens, lights, and sound. The screens show games, dashboard graphics, and video fragments. Visitors can interact with the installation through their phones.
*installation view ALT PH 2026*The work reflects on the shifting conditions of contemporary labor, where the boundaries of home and factory dissolve. Remote work, digital nomadism, and platform-driven economies form the backdrop for this exploration of productivity, intimacy, and control.
In the Philippine context, this takes shape through the widespread adoption of work-from-home arrangements, where households double as sites of globalized labor. At the same time, the phenomenon of real-time outsourced work—from customer service to content moderation—underscores how local workers sustain the infrastructures of distant economies.
The installation also gestures toward the militarized edge of digital labor: drone wars increasingly controlled by gamers, whose skills in virtual environments are repurposed into remote combat operations. This convergence of play, surveillance, and warfare highlights the paradoxical intimacy of labor performed at a distance, where the consequences are immediate yet geographically displaced.
The physical environment of the installation is populated with toys that are scanned and integrated into the visual layers of the game. Other materials are borrowed and repurposed, while the screens and CPUs come from either borrowed existing equipment or surplus shops. These devices, often considered e‑waste or discarded technology from the West, are reanimated within the installation, highlighting how under capitalism the problem of e‑waste has become a serious global issue.
Parallel: Chrono Escape 2050 is a featured game within the installation Ghost_Control2026. It explores the concept of the predestination paradox, immersing audiences in a time-bending conflict where their actions both shape and seal the fate of the future.
*chrono escape 2050 visuals*Player Roles
Green Faction: The installation unfolds from their perspective. Their mission is to ensure that a USB drive from the year 2050 successfully travels back through a wormhole into 2026. They can also accelerate the USB’s movement, increasing its chances of reaching the past.
Red Faction: Their objective is to prevent the USB from entering 2026, since it is the artifact that triggers the apocalypse in the future.
Game Masters: They can both speed up the USB's movement and add obstacles to challenge the Green Team's progress.
All controls are accessed through a web app. Audience members scan a QR code with their phones, which assigns them to a faction and allows them to influence the unfolding narrative in real time.