The term “echo chamber” was popularised by scholars such as Cass Sunstein in the early 2000s. Sunstein argues that the rise of communication technologies and internet had rendered a closed environment in which like-minded people engage only with one another, thereby reinforcing their beliefs.1 Media structures have the potential to form enclosed space in which one side of an argument is disproportionately circulated, while being isolated from other perspectives. With the increasing provision of “personalised”, “curated”, and “customised” online experiences by algorithms, this filtered bubble intensifies. Artist Renwei Liu examines the mechanisms of the echo chamber as operated by algorithms in the recent moving image piece, Reverb News (2025).
Liu specifically captures the algorithms that construct the echo chamber in the digital space, while remaining invisible and ambiguous, wrapped in secrecy. Often tightly protected by large technology corporations, these systems leave users with limited control over how algorithms shape their experience or determine the selection of content that appears so seamlessly on their screens, at their fingertips. Unquestionably, the algorithmic system is present but without a discernible form. As the title suggests, the existence of the algorithm is sensed through the sound: a seemingly trustworthy and neutral voice, mimicking a news presenter, set against echoing ambient sounds. Just as one might estimate a space through sonar, the reverbing sounds hints at the scale of this confined space, a collapsed universe that refuses to reveal its full contour.
Central to the piece is Liu’s metaphor of “algorithmic incubation”, conceived as a series of development programmes. The visuals depict industrial-scale chicken egg incubators lit with red light, where a human subject is curled into the fetal position and placed among the eggs. Using the languages of digital systems, the artist subverts the traditional biological associations of the womb to present it as a site of algorithmic intervention, resembling mandatory operating-system updates on personal digital devices. The mechanical narrator explains that during the incubation, “the subject is not grown but formatted” and “the subject is not being born but rebooted”. This distinction lies at the core of Liu’s critique of digital space dictated by algorithms: individuals are not nurtured into diverse forms of subjectivity but rather have their thinking altered to ensure compatibility with specific narratives.
The subjects who have undergone algorithmic incubation are conditioned to absorb the information and narratives fed to them by deeply embedded algorithms. They are rendered incapable of independent thought and optimised for cognitive dependence. In Reverb News, the cognitive world of the subjects collapses to a confined rectangle of the screen, as subjects are aimlessly and continuously swiping the screen. Although the eerie sound and abstract scene conjure a fictional space, Liu’s work offers a poignant commentary on how humans now perceive the world primarily and often unconsciously through digital channels. Liu holds up a mirror to how algorithms have fashioned echo chambers that enclose us, before we even realise it.
Written by Kahyun Lee
1. Sunstein, Cass R. Republic.Com. (Princeton University Press, 2002), 65.
