AUTOMATED WORLD
(RCA Degree Show)
This series features a collection of automated machines engaged in futile, fragmented, or absurd labour, interrogating the contradictions of automation under late capitalism. By translating performative service labour into mechanised, repetitive movements, the works critique the paradox of automation—its promise of efficiency alongside its reality of alienation, redundancy, and systemic fragility.
Employing perishable materials like ice cream with rigid mechanisms, creating a tension between indulgence and discipline. By engineering movements that resist completion or satisfaction, Louise examines how labour is aestheticized and mechanised under contemporary capitalism. Exposed circuitry and visible strain render invisible effort hyper-visible through repetition. Instead of presenting machines as metaphors of productivity, she frames them as sites of excess, failure, and persistence. Her sculptures confront the contradictions of mechanised existence-where desire and exhaustion co-exist, and labour loops in endless, unresolved gestures.
MOUTHLESSÂ
MOUTHLESS
2025
Soft Serve, Silicone, Metal, Acrylic, and Mechanical Component
150 x 100 x 45 cm
The work explores the automation of desire and the commodification of pleasure under late capitalism. Tongues mimic indulgence but are locked into a loop of futile labour, highlighting the way consumption and productivity collapse into spectacle. The ice cream melts, the tongues keep licking, and nothing is ever truly tasted—it questions the systems that promise fulfillments but deliver only cycles of unending demand.
Each tongue operates at a slightly different rhythm, creating a choreography of difference within sameness. This subtle variation evokes a sense of individuality caught within systemic control—laborers performing side by side, either in quiet competition or reluctant collaboration. While each machine appears autonomous, they are all bound by the same mechanical logic, echoing themes of control, depersonalization, and repetition.
404: TONGUE NOT FOUND
404: TONGUE NOT FOUND
2025
Metal, Silicone and Mechanical Component
125 x 125 x 30 cm
404: TONGUE NOT FOUND presents a square formation of mechanical units, each bearing a silicone tongue that licks an acrylic panel in erratic yet synchronised patterns. A residue of gel, mimicking saliva, accumulates on the surface—marking the site of futile contact and amplifying the tension between intimacy and failure.
This kinetic installation probes the boundary between control and chaos, agency and automation. The tongues lick forwards and backwards in a loop with no resolution, evoking a condition of being perpetually online—endlessly responsive, yet fundamentally disconnected.
SERVE://FAIL
SERVE://FAIL
2025
Soft Serve, Trouser, Wood, Spring, Fabric, Mannequin, Shoe and Mechanical Component
120 x 110 x 135 cm
SERVE://FAIL is an extension of 0 - - - 1 - - - 0, reconfigured with a mannequin hand that now holds a melting ice cream.Â
As soft serve drips steadily onto the surface below, the hand on the shoe-shining box moves rhythmically, each wipe performed with futile intent. Over time, the ice cream accumulates, creating a mess that resists cleaning.
This mechanical loop stages a contradiction between service and sabotage. The work reflects on the absurdity of labour caught in self-defeating cycles: to serve, only to fail. By fusing indulgence with discipline, and pleasure with repetition, SERVE://FAIL interrogates the rituals of maintenance under late capitalism—where work becomes performance, and productivity an unattainable ideal.