I am no less a camera than any other image

In the installation Self-help for Synthetic Machines, three Synthetic Machines gather as if in quiet conversation—figures of connection that never truly connect. Printed in shimmering mother-of-pearl filament and mounted on camera and selfie tripods, they evoke the familiar posture of functional devices: ready to record, to observe, to respond. Yet their purpose lies elsewhere.
Each machine holds a small smartphone within a built-in display opening, looping videos that show devices comforting, confessing, or collapsing under emotional strain. As they “speak,” they seem to exchange their troubles—but their dialogue drifts, never meeting. Their language of self-help becomes a choreography of disconnection, a series of gestures that imitate intimacy while revealing the void beneath.
Ostermann’s Synthetic Machines perform as if they were operative technologies, but they are not machines at all. Stripped of all presumable function, they simulate presence and emotion, becoming uncanny stand-ins for care. Together, they map the fragile circuits of technological empathy: a yearning for connection that glitches, circles back, and lingers as possibility.