Truthmachine to make Edinburgh Fringe debut this August
- Immersive Rumours
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
Twelve strangers enter a room. One volunteers to take a lie detector test.
Photo: Kate O'Sullivan
Award-winning Australian company Counterpilot brings its acclaimed interactive experience Truthmachine to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August, inviting audiences to take part in a working lie detector test and explore why the truth can be so difficult to face.
Truthmachine places twelve audience members in an intimate interrogation room. Throughout the 30-minute experience, one volunteer is connected to a custom-built polygraph system and subjected to a live interrogation. As biometric sensors track heart rate, breathing and galvanic skin response, the rest of the audience becomes the jury, tasked with deciding whether the volunteer is telling the truth.
Audience members can choose whether to volunteer for interrogation or remain witnesses to the experiment. Those who step forward are asked a series of questions exploring social shame, vulnerability, self-disclosure and the fears many of us have about what might happen if our private thoughts became public.
Throughout the performance, a bespoke soundscape and lighting design respond in real time to physiological data, transforming the volunteer's bodily responses into a shared sensory experience.
Developed by Brisbane-based arts company Counterpilot, Truthmachine combines live performance, interactive technology and documentary storytelling.
The production emerged from the company's fascination with the cultural mythology surrounding lie detectors and the powerful hold they continue to exert on the public imagination.
The concept was initially developed during the first Trump presidency, at a time when public debate was increasingly shaped by fake news, alternative facts and competing versions of reality. The original impetus came when Oxford Dictionaries named "post-truth" its Word oft he Year, reflecting a moment when public understanding of truth itself appeared to be shifting.
As political and cultural conversations became consumed by questions of truth, Counterpilot became interested in a more unsettling possibility: what happens when certainty is unavailable, and some truths may never be fully known?
"The lie detector as a pop cultural trope represents a naive hopefulness that truth is in there somewhere, perhaps extractable by technology", says Nathan Sibthorpe, Artistic Director.
Alongside the live interrogation, Truthmachine explores the history of truth itself, the invention of the lie detector, and the long-running debate surrounding its reliability. The production also draws on the story of Douglas Williams, the real-life anti-polygraph campaigner who spent years teaching people how to beat lie detector tests and became one of the most outspoken critics of the technology.
For Truthmachine, Counterpilot built its own lie detector. Developed with software designers,theatre-makers and technical specialists using original polygraph research, the custom-built system transforms biometric data into an unnerving chorus of light and sound. Between rounds of interrogation, audiences are introduced to the history of the polygraph, its controversies and critics, before ultimately being shown how lie detector tests can be beaten.
Combining technical badassery with audience participation, Truthmachine invites audiences to step inside a lie detector test, compare notes with a room full of strangers, and leave wondering exactly what was real.
Truthmachine runs at C alto (Venue 40) from 7th to 30th August 2026 at various times. For more information and to book tickets, visit edfringe.com
