HEYDT’s Caged confronts the paradox of freedom within digital capitalism. The digital bird, alive yet artificial, free yet imprisoned, embodies the illusion of liberty within strict confines of control—a striking metaphor for our condition in the virtual age. The cage is not just a physical structure but a representation of the invisible systems that define and limit existence. As viewers, we become complicit in the bird’s confinement. We project meaning onto its hollow performance, taking pleasure in its artificial life while ignoring the bars that surround it. The cage is not an external imposition but a necessary condition of the bird’s being, much like the structures of surveillance and commodification that shape our own lives. The bird’s shimmering artificiality blurs the line between the real and the simulated, exposing the uneasy relationship between humanity and technology. Its indifference to us underscores our alienation. The bird’s movements exist not for itself but for our gaze, reflecting the gap between our fantasies of freedom and the reality of our confinement. Caged forces us to confront these tensions. The cage, both literal and symbolic, reveals the boundaries we often fail to see and the frameworks that construct our notions of freedom. The work offers no resolution; the bird remains trapped, its freedom an illusion.