Synkroniciti is thrilled to reveal the cover for our upcoming Technology issue: Can you sleep without the static by Amber Coen Collins, an artist and intersectional feminist scholar hailing from Ireland and currently based in Hong Kong, where she is pursuing a PhD in Creative Media. Her work was previously featured in our Vulnerable issue and we nominated it for Best of the Net. This is her first cover with us, however.
We received a number of outstanding submissions for Technology, but Can you sleep without the static immediately captured our attention and rewarded deeper exploration. There is so much to unpack here.
In Can you sleep without the static, Amber explores a world where the boundaries between body and machine, and between dream and identity, have become increasingly porous. Delicate circuitry intertwines with biology, reshaping perception and communication, redefining humanity and femininity. Luminous blues, golds, and pinks combine with hyperfeminine representation–historically the playground for the masculine gaze and made popular by male artists in the graphic novel and comics genres–to create a visual language that is at once seductive, unsettling, and deeply contemporary. The work invites us to consider how technology inhabits our inner lives, shaping perception, desire, memory, and dreams.
An unexpected thread running through a number of the submissions for our Technology issue was a sense of heightened desire. Amber’s painting captures this tension beautifully. Rather than presenting technology as a cold external force acting upon us, she reveals it as something being woven into our very being, changing our sense of self. Her exploration of hyperfeminine aesthetics and post-human identity speaks directly to many of the conversations unfolding in contemporary culture, making Can you sleep without the static a compelling and thought-provoking cover for this issue.
We also simply can’t stop looking at it. Congratulations, Amber!
Technology will be available for pre-order later this month at Purchase Individual Issues – synkroniciti and we will have more about Amber’s work in her artist feature in late 2026/early 2027. She will have two works featured as well as a short article discussing her insight into modern technology and identity.
Amber Coen Collins is an artist and arts-based, intersectional feminist scholar. She works at the intersection of speculative digital aesthetics, hyper-feminine embodiment, polycentric narratives, and post-human identity. Central to her practice is the idea of the Subversive Hyperfeminine, what it means, how it is both desired and reviled in contemporary culture and how it thrives at the intersection of queerness, femininity, neurodiversity and the ‘other’. When she is not playing Dressmaker, she is thinking about how many cats is too many? The limit does not exist.
Gorgeous artwork! Congratulations, Amber!
Thanks, Barb! Amber captures the seductive nature of AI and how technology changes us. I am always stunned by the way artists respond to our themes.
Kat