5 Phase explores the concept of Automation Anxiety — the growing sense of stress and unease experienced by humans as technological development accelerates and increasingly shapes everyday life.

While Artificial Intelligence currently dominates public conversation, raising concerns around job displacement, deskilling, and the loss of control over trusted knowledge and information, this work situates AI within a longer historical continuum. Research into the evolution of computing demonstrates that Automation Anxiety has emerged progressively, accompanying each major technological shift rather than appearing suddenly in the present moment.

The sculpture is structured around five interlinked vertical pillars, each representing a key phase in the development of computing and its associated anxiety: Mainframes, Personal Computing, Networks, Cloud, and Artificial Intelligence. Their uneven alignment and precarious balance reflect the cumulative pressure created as each new technological layer is added.

Overlaying the pillars are found and repurposed objects, assembled to extend the narrative beyond abstraction and into lived experience. At the centre of the work, a heavy, industrial clamp grips a sculpted human brain, holding it in a state of compression and tension. This image symbolises the mental strain caused by constant reflection, speculation, and uncertainty — the endless weighing of risk against opportunity prompted by emerging technologies.

As the viewer encounters the work, the structure reads not as a single moment but as an accumulation — anxiety building phase by phase, until it reaches the current era of seemingly relentless AI discourse. 5 Phase presents a visual meditation on progress, pressure, and the psychological cost of innovation, asking how technological advancement might be navigated without overwhelming the human mind it seeks to serve.