Very Nervous System (1986-2004). Movement is transformed into music in this installation. Courtesy the artist

Gallery-goers will find themselves part of the artworks when they visit the new David Rokeby exhibition at FACT in Liverpool.

Silicon Remembers Carbon, running until June 20 2007, is the first major UK retrospective of the renowned artist’s work and features installations that let visitors watch people milling around other spaces in and outside the gallery.

The works Seen and Taken (both 2002) are explorations of the extending surveillance society, while a new work, Watch, will use a live processed video stream of shoppers and pigeons in nearby Ropewalk Square.

The show also features pioneering sound installation, Very Nervous System (1986-2004), and the sound/language experimental works n-Cha(n)t (2001) and The Giver of Names (1990-).

Seen (2002). The work depicts footage from St Mark's Square in Venice, processed in four different ways. Courtesy the artist

Canada-born Rokeby incorporates new media and technology into his work to represent human thought processes artistically, examining the complex mechanisms that give rise to our perceptions of colours, sounds and shapes.

For example, The Giver of Names emphasises the difference between human and artificial intelligence. It consists of a computer system that gives objects names. Visitors choose items from a pile scattered around a pedestal, or put their own things on the pedestal. A video camera captures an image of the item(s), which is passed on to be processed by the computer programme and an increasingly abstract interpretation of the object is projected above the pedestal.

The Giver of Names (detail, 1991-). Courtesy the artist

The computer goes through a complicated process of analysis and produces words to describe its perception of the object, which are then spoken aloud in a slightly mystifying and often poetic sentence.

“By the timely day, the holy castle of the vermillion floc is unceasingly split by the breathtaking pistol under which the enlightenment does harm,” runs one resulting from a shuttlecock-shaped object and pistol.

Very Nervous System, meanwhile, uses cameras, computers and synthesisers to create an interactive space where body movement is transformed into music. The technology Rokeby developed for this work has subsequently been taken up by composers, choreographers, musicians and artists. It’s even being used in music therapy, and is being tested as an activity enabler in the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease.

Rokeby’s experimentation and use of modern technology has led to acclaim in both the arts and technical fields. He has been awarded a BAFTA and twice been honoured with the Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction.