'Endless scrolling induces permanent craving': panGenerator highlights our unhealthy relationship with technology

""The infinity scroll is a mechanism often utilised by social media services and platforms, suggesting infinite amounts of content," read the label for Infinity (2020), an interactive installation by the Polish collective panGenerator. "Endless scrolling induces a state of permanent craving in the mind, tempting it with an endless stream of new information, which, however, it is incapable of processing. Scrolling thus becomes a purely sensory experience, inducing a hypnosis of sorts.""

""We want to make you a bit uncomfortable," he says. "This is a performative piece, and the user is the performer. We want to make people feel awkward and a bit strange, to make them more aware and open to reflecting on the act of daily digital, visual scrolling." The kneeling adds a religious element too, although Koźniewski admits it is not always readily understood by all of the cultures and contexts that it has been presented in."

Five contemporary Polish artists presented interactive works that probe how technology shapes sensory experience and attention. Visitors crouched on a leather kneeler to scroll through streams of nonsensical illuminated shapes and symbols on a monolithic digital screen. The installation frames the infinity scroll as a mechanism that induces craving and a sensory, hypnotic state by overwhelming processing capacity. The performative kneeling creates discomfort and positions the user as performer, adding a religious dimension that parallels trust and belief in opaque digital technologies. Viewers are compared to people who treat technology as a black box or modern-day magic.

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