In a darkened office I sit alone at my desk. Lit only by the wan flicker of the computer monitor, I’m searching for answers through the byzantine labyrinth of an online video library. Some are archival records of what happened, some are messages in response. With no way to identify the authenticity of each video, I am left to piece the puzzle together for myself. I press play on the next video, titled Conversion.

This one is a video response. A message. On screen, accompanied by a familiar electronic hum, the flicker of black and white bars reminds me of analogue static. In the noise, as though drifting to the surface, an anthropomorphic shape appears. Suddenly both are gone, replaced on screen with a code – one of many – among coloured geometric shapes. The code too is soon replaced by a new image: an array of coloured digital vectors and a crudely animated spectral white face in the corner of the frame. The audio sounds like the whimper of a dying carnival, and a mutter of indistinguishable voices washes in and out like ocean waves. Behind the image appears the face of a familiar man, someone who is key to solving the puzzle but equally inscrutable in his actions and behaviour. His voice has been muted. On screen, amid the digital hiss of an image saturated with ruptures and static, a new message:

WHO ARE THE LIARS?

Despite knowing this query is directed to someone other than me, the question speaks to my own growing distrust of the people who have created and uploaded the videos, yet also of the images themselves. On screen, other recognisable figures appear, snatches from previous videos that have been compressed, garbled, digitally disfigured.

The video asks: ARE YOU ONE OF THEM. And then threatens: REMEMBER TO LOOK BEHIND YOU (Figure 7.1).

A ghost-like body of static recedes into the darkness on screen. The soundtrack becomes a plangent growl that shifts in pitch as the image continues to break down. The growl recedes, replaced by a deep hum as more perplexing batches of numbers flash onto the screen. While I struggle to comprehend, my body is already offering its own inchoate answer to the question posed by the unnerving sounds and images.