A rope hangs from the ceiling at 421 Arts Campus, one of many suspended through the room. The invitation is simple: reach up and pull.
For a moment, all that surrounds the visitor is a soft soundscape of nature. Then the rope interrupts it. A brief electronic glitch cuts through the calm. Another rope produces another response. At first, the sounds appear random. Soon, they begin to feel like clues.
This is Human in the Loop, a sound-based interactive art installation by Ahmad AlAttar, on display at the Abu Dhabi venue until September 14. It marks the artist and engineer’s first institutional solo exhibition, and the culmination of his time in 421’s Artistic Development Programme.
The work is staged as a game of hide-and-seek between visitors and an unseen algorithm. By pulling hanging ropes and listening to the changes in sound, participants try to locate where the algorithm is hiding. Fainter glitches suggest distance. Sharper, more intense distortions suggest proximity. When the correct rope is found, the room responds with a heightened moment of sound and light. Then the algorithm moves, and the search starts again.
The title comes from robotics and artificial intelligence, with “human in the loop” describing a system that relies on human input. AlAttar, who has a doctorate in robotics, has translated the phrase into a physical experience.
“It usually means that a human is part of the control process of any algorithm, code or robot. Here, I’m being a bit playful with the word. It can mean two things: the human is part of the control and, at the same time, the human is being controlled by the algorithm,” he says.
That double meaning gives the work its sense of unease. The installation begins as play, but the longer visitors remain inside it, the more their behaviour changes. They listen harder, move with more intention and start responding to the system’s cues.
“Is it you steering the algorithm or the algorithm steering you in the art gallery?” AlAttar says.
During a demonstration, the moment of discovery did not feel like a clean victory. The sound sharpened, the room shifted and the algorithm seemed to reveal itself only to disappear again. AlAttar says that refusal of satisfaction is deliberate.
“Once you get to the final point, where you think you will be rewarded, suddenly you see this glitch happening,” he says. “To me, it is a moment where the code or the programme suddenly reveals itself.”
Then it vanishes. There is no final score, no sense of completion. “It is intentional that it doesn’t satisfy you,” he says. “It makes you feel like: OK, you’re back again. I didn’t want people to feel like they were done.”
The work also represents what disappears when attention is captured. The ambient sound of nature continues throughout the installation, but visitors may stop noticing it as they focus on chasing the algorithm.
“Is technology really pulling us away from nature, from what really matters, from the real physical world around us?” he asks.
AlAttar, 31, came to art through engineering. He studied mechatronics systems engineering at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, completed a master’s at King’s College London and received his doctorate in robotics engineering from Imperial College London in 2023. His research explored how robotic systems can learn like infants, using a robotic arm learning to grasp for the first time.
That interest in learning, repetition and feedback runs through Human in the Loop. Visitors begin uncertainly, then slowly learn how the system behaves.
“The first time might be confusing,” he says. “But the moment you get the hang of it, you can easily go to where the algorithm is steering you.”
The installation is his largest work so far. Early tests began in his basement with a single rope, then expanded into a prototype of 16 ropes. At 421, the piece has become a fully immersive environment, shaped by the gallery itself.
“This kind of work goes hand in hand with the space,” he says. “I couldn’t develop it in isolation without knowing the space, because it depends on it.”
The work was developed through 421’s Artistic Development Programme, where AlAttar worked closely with mentor Jolaine Frizzell. She first met him three years ago, when he was part of an artist duo.
“We’ve been working together over a number of years, meeting probably once a month and talking about what he’s interested in, talking about tech,” Frizzell says. “He’s an incredible artist, and we’ve learnt a lot from each other.”
AlAttar says the programme helped him stop trying to fit into a fixed idea of what an artist should be. He arrived with a different set of ideas, but says the process taught him to question everything.
“That voice is embedded in me now: to question everything and refine it,” he says. “That has really shaped me.”
More than anything, the programme gave him permission.
“Don’t try to be something you’re not,” he recalls being told. “Just be who you are and do the coolest thing that you can think of.”
It was a liberating shift for someone trained in engineering. “At the start, I felt like I did not fit in. I felt like I had to be an artist, or pretend to be one,” he says.
Instead, he was encouraged to make art through his own methods. “Everyone makes art in their own way,” AlAttar says.
That confidence pushed him towards the scale of Human in the Loop. “That’s when I thought: let’s do the craziest thing, the most difficult thing, the most challenging thing I could think of,” he says.
The installation also reflects a wider shift in the UAE’s art scene, where technology-led practices are increasingly entering institutional spaces. AlAttar prefers work that sits between the physical and digital, sometimes described as phygital. He is less interested in technology that remains sealed inside a screen.
“I don’t really like things that are purely in the digital realm,” he says. “This blurs the line, and I enjoy that blur.”
Frizzell says that is why the work matters. “This is the future. We’re all living with technology,” she says.
She points to the way people accept software updates without fully considering what they are agreeing to. “Every time an Apple update happens and we just click ‘I agree’,” she says.
For Frizzell, the work asks visitors to slow down and think about those everyday exchanges with technology. But she is careful not to frame the installation as a warning against technology.
“I don’t think this is a doomsday message,” she says. “This is just part of us being more aware.”
AlAttar shares that sense of caution without panic. “Technology changes very rapidly,” he says. “A year ago, I wouldn’t trust ChatGPT with half the things that I tell it today.”
“I think the line is becoming very fine,” he says. “It might break at any moment, where you just fully give in and trust.”
Human in the Loop does not answer that anxiety directly. It turns it into an experience. A visitor pulls a rope, hears a glitch, follows a clue and tries again. The system responds, rewards, resets.
Only after stepping away does the game reveal its sharper question: were you playing with the algorithm or had it been teaching you how to play?
