Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is urgently encouraging me to stick a finger in the hole in the gallery wall to have my finger-print recorded, my pulse added, and the throbbing result transmitted to screens around the walls. The problem is, he needs 10,952 finger-prints – of ever-diminishing scale, down to life-size – to fill the room. On current estimates, it'll take until February! And the show closes on 12^th Feb!

It's all a bit silly; participatory fun for the summer crowds brought into the Museum of Contemporary Art for the city's Sydney International Art Series, which also includes a serious Picasso show from the rival Art Gallery of NSW, on loan from the Musee National Picasso in Paris.

But hang on! Finger-printing is also a Homeland Security issue, with just a hint of Orwell's Big Brother isn't it – not just fun. What plans does the Mexican/Canadian artist have for my finger-prints – or my facial images, my voices, my pulses or anything else he's recorded in this, his first solo show in Australia? For, even in Lozano-Hemmer's more serious works, like Seismoscope 2, there's only the illusion of control offered to participants. In virtually every work, your image or voice will drop off the end of the line at some time, which should alert viewers to their fugitive nature of their contribution. That's the very essence of the recursive algorithms and fractals which the artist and his team of 11 artist/technicians are so comfortable with.

New to the world in Sydney are Voice Array and Tape Recorders, while much else in Recorders was first seen at Manchester Art Gallery a year ago. The former work translates my voice into flashing lights that push previous voices out along a wall, one unlucky player – the 288^th - falling off the end. The latter offers two walls of motorised measuring tapes that climb up the wall when someone stands in front of them. When each reaches its full 3 metre extent, it crashes to the ground.

While the kid in me is having fun here, though, a cumulative account is being made of how long people stay with the artwork – a low-tech version of David Walsh's 'O' machine that counts time and response to each of his artworks at the Museum of Old & New Art in Hobart (where, incidentally, Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Index is in the collection).

“The past and the present are co-existing in the same space”, says the artist seriously. “I enjoy giving the spectator a pre-eminent role, which will hopefully displease the curatorial and critical elites who believe that most visitors are morons. Technology is inevitable; the best we can do is pervert it, and create connective, critical or poetic experiences to make it evident”.

Recorders is on at the MCA in Sydney until 12 February.