Deepfake research inspires Light Up Lancaster artwork

On 5–7 November 2026, the annual Light Up Lancaster festival returned to bring the magic of light art to the city once again. Carrying the theme “No boundaries” this year, the festival featured an artwork that responds to research by Security Lancaster researchers on synthetic media and deepfakes.

Supported by the EPSRC PBIAA CyberFocus, DUPLICATION is a participatory digital artwork created by the artist NA11, in collaboration with Dr Justin Lo, Dr Georgina Brown, Prof Claire Hardaker (FACTOR Research Group, Linguistics and English Language), and Dr Sophie Nightingale (Nightingale Lab, Psychology). The piece explores how the capture, copying, and manipulation of our faces, voices, and personal data expose vulnerabilities in our identities and blur the boundaries of being human.

Dr Justin Lo, Academic Co-lead of the Security Lancaster research theme Boundaries of Being and lead researcher of the collaboration, said “It was remarkable seeing our research come to life and sharing it with the public in such a spectacular form. Working with NA11 over the past few months has been a wonderful process, and we hope the piece created the space for the audience to reflect more on their relationship with the digital world.“

Over three nights, the original artwork was displayed in the Storey Gallery, with portraits and voices of people connected to Lancaster repeating and transforming before the visitors’ eyes. The Storey building was also home to the Cyber Zone and hosted a range of interactive games from the wider cybersecurity research community for visitors to take part in.

Earlier during the half-term holidays, the FACTOR group and Nightingale Lab offered two days of hands-on, family-friendly activities as part of Campus in the City in the Light Up Lancaster Explore Week. Visitors took on the role of AI Investigators to figure out whether recordings of voices, music, and images of faces were genuinely human or created with AI.