Iregular Makes Its NYC Premiere at the Flatiron Plaza with 'CONTROL NO CONTROL'

Across the street, you spot a strange object sitting in the open air. A large, perfect cube - dark and angular, as though it had been dropped from outer space. As you approach it, you see flashing movement, lights skimming across the faces of the object. Getting closer still, the lights change - they’re sharp, bright, and erratic, like static on a TV screen. 

Now so close that you could touch the object, you reach out - and that’s when you realise. The cube sees you. It’s tracking your movements, and responding. Perhaps these lights aren’t random emissions, or some kind of malfunction; maybe they’re feedback. It’s a conversation. Maybe, somehow, you’re controlling this cube. Or, stranger still… Perhaps it’s controlling you. 

That scenario is the mind-bending conceit at the heart of CONTROL NO CONTROL, an outdoor interactive experience from the minds of Daniel Iregui and the team at Iregular. 

Not long after having celebrated their 13th anniversary, the contemporary art studio has announced plans to bring CONTROL NO CONTROL to New York City, taking up residence directly outside of the iconic Flatiron Building in the borough of Manhattan. The installation will mark the first time that Iregular’s work has been showcased in NYC. 

The Big Apple joins a long list of cities to have featured the exhibition, beginning in Montreal back in 2011. Since that date, CONTROL NO CONTROL has been shown over 35 times around the world, from Paris to Kyoto via Riyadh and many more. As a result, it has become one of Iregular’s most defining projects - helping to set the tone for the studio’s unique style and become “a vehicle for research”, as Daniel himself explains to LBB. 

“CONTROL NO CONTROL began life in what I like to call the ‘Home Depot’ phase of Iregular”, he laughs. “When my days would consist of walking around the aisles of that store looking for materials and inspiration”. 

But the original idea - in which the artwork tracks an audience member’s movement and responds with visual outputs - didn’t come from a vacuum. Daniel traces the germ of CONTROL NO CONTROL back to his early days as a web designer. “I used to work on all kinds of websites before launching Iregular as a studio, some traditional and some more experimental”, he says. “As a result of that experience I built up an understanding of how people behaved in front of their computer screens. Where their mouse trackers would move, and the kind of messages or imagery their eyes were drawn towards”. 

Daniel took that digital experience and applied it to the physical world - with exhibitions like CONTROL NO CONTROL that elicit behaviours from people as they interact with the artwork. “Immediately we started seeing recurring patterns in how people played with the exhibit”, recalls Daniel. “And that continued no matter where we took it. From North America, to Europe, Asia and beyond, people respond in similar ways. The idea is that you’re free to converse with the art however you want. So it’s interesting to me how so many people choose to make the same choices with that freedom”. 

Now, however, the studio’s arguably most iconic piece of work will adorn its biggest stage - and face perhaps its biggest challenge - yet: The attention spans of busy New Yorkers. “I’m so excited to see CONTROL NO CONTROL on the streets of New York, and especially in front of such an iconic space like the Flatiron Building”, explains Daniel. “But I’m also intrigued to see how New Yorkers play with it. Will it grab their attention as they rush past? We’re hoping so”.  

But as well as defining Iregular’s style and its unique approach to audience interaction through its exhibitions, CONTROL NO CONTROL also sums up the studio’s growth. From the ‘Home Depot phase’ of the early 2010s to a digital art studio which fuels exhibitions across every corner of the globe in some of the most renowned spaces, CONTROL NO CONTROL has been there throughout it all. 

“Something I like seeing most in our work is how it creates these serendipitous moments that feel completely random and unexplained, and you can see the excitement in the audience as they feel they’ve experienced something totally unique”, says Daniel.

Those are the moments where Iregular’s work resides. And, through CONTROL NO CONTROL, it’s New Yorkers who are set to be a part of them next.