Through sound, vibration, industrial data, and chemical codes, Sung Tieu’s Systems Void transforms systems that usually remain invisible into a physical and sensory experience.
At the Whitney Biennial 2026, Sung Tieu presents Systems Void, an installation that gives physical form to technological and industrial systems that typically operate beyond everyday perception.
Born in Vietnam and based in Berlin, Tieu creates work that frequently examines how bureaucratic and technological structures influence the way people experience and understand the world.
In Systems Void, she turns industrial warning signals into sound, allowing information normally confined to monitoring equipment and technical systems to become something visitors can hear and physically experience.
Turning Data Into Sound
The installation draws from danger signals associated with hazardous gas systems at fracking sites across the United States.
Normally, these signals exist within specialized industrial monitoring systems.
Tieu removes them from that context and translates them into sound.
Inside the Whitney Museum, the signals are amplified through a large pipe, transforming technical information into vibration and noise that moves through the gallery.
Instead of simply reading information about an industrial system, visitors encounter it through their senses.
Making Invisible Systems Visible
A video projection accompanies the sound installation.
Streams of chemical code move across the projection, transforming technical classifications into a visual experience.
Like the sounds traveling through the pipe, this information would ordinarily remain within specialized systems that most people rarely encounter directly.
By bringing these codes into the gallery, Tieu makes the language of infrastructure part of the artwork itself.
Technology and Perception
This translation between information and sensory experience is central to Systems Void.
Data becomes sound.
Chemical classifications become moving images.
Industrial infrastructure becomes an immersive environment.
Through these transformations, Tieu asks viewers to consider how much of contemporary life is shaped by systems that remain largely unseen.
We may experience their effects without necessarily seeing the technologies, classifications, and processes operating behind them.
Sound as a Physical Experience
The large pipe gives the installation a distinctly physical presence.
Sound does not simply accompany the artwork—it moves through the structure and fills the surrounding environment.
Vibration allows information to be experienced through the body.
This shift from technical signal to physical sensation changes the relationship between the viewer and the information being presented.
What might otherwise appear abstract becomes immediate.
Systems Void at the Whitney Biennial 2026
Within the Whitney Biennial, Tieu’s installation contributes to a broader conversation about technology, infrastructure, environment, and the systems shaping contemporary experience.
Rather than representing these systems from a distance, she brings their signals directly into the museum.
The work reveals how information can circulate beneath the surface of everyday life and how technologies can influence our surroundings without always being immediately visible.
At the Whitney Museum of American Art, Sung Tieu’s Systems Void transforms hidden signals and industrial data into sound, vibration, and moving images—making normally unseen infrastructures physically present and asking viewers to reconsider the systems operating just beyond their perception.
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