This art installation examines the best and worst of the internet. So what’s the yeti all about?

Mark Haslam has what could be regarded as a controversial view of the modern world. “I genuinely think it’s an amazing time to be alive,” the experimental artist says.

Even the technological male voice from this reporter’s phone announcing the call is being recorded amuses Haslam. “If only I had a voice that deep and resonant,” he jokes.

Haslam’s looming performance-cum-exhibition FAKE , at Eveleigh’s Carriageworks for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas this weekend, extends this approach.

Sitting inside a box made of scrim-mesh fabric in the centre of the warehouse, Haslam operates three computers, scraping the internet’s darkest corners using a custom system. The results project onto the warehouse walls.

While Haslam can barely see out of it, onlookers can see inside the box as he perches for an hour, narrating while scraping social media sites such as 4chan, Reddit and TikTok, as well as media outlets encompassing Iranian and Russian state media.

Audience members can interact with the system by submitting thoughts, which are subsequently fed into the machine and will affect the performance.

“The system can run on its own, as you can just press go and away it’ll all kind of run,” Haslam says. “But for the performance itself, I control it, and above me there’s four TV screens. Outside of me, there’s six projection screens. So you’re completely surrounded by vision and audio – and I just talk to you through the screens.

“I type, it appears. We have an engagement. We talk to each other, and then I tell you where I’m going to point it, and we point it at a particular place, and we go and explore these places.”

Between Haslam’s narration, an AI-generated voice of a fictional British character takes over, as techno music blares. “It’s genuinely a party in there,” he says.

There is also a performer in a yeti costume who wanders around, camera in hand, interacting with guests and feeding images into the box.

“The progression of the yeti in the work is that they gradually become more and more involved in the work and the audience and eventually takes the mask off. A physical representation of dropping personas and becoming human,” Haslam says. “It’s my link to the audience in a physical way.”

Haslam’s show at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas is part of a 10-day line-up of more than 150 artists, scholars, politicians and journalists – including Tim Minchin, Malcolm Turnbull, Bob Carr, Maria Ressa, Cory Doctorow and Pussy Riot’s Maria Alyokhina.

The festival also includes world-premiere art shows, provocative cinema, punk gigs and access to forbidden spaces. The Carriageworks foyer will feature the interactive installation Heap – 120 tonnes of dirt, upon which audiences are invited to walk barefoot and dig into to uncover new artworks created by eight Australian artists.

For Haslam, his performance is an opportunity to showcase humanity on the internet at both its most disturbing and its most heartfelt. Various trigger warnings are given before audiences enter, stating they may see all sorts of offensive content. The show avoids child exploitation material which, aside from being illegal, is blocked by technology company safeguards.