The Reality Checking Device presents the viewer with an animated graphic that weighs the perception of risk against the likelihood that something poses a true threat to one's safety. As such, the Reality Checking Device acts as a corrective to the transformation of current events into spectacle by the news media, which tends to inflate public outrage. The Reality Checking Device employs light and reflection to poetic effect: the device's mirrored surface returns the viewer's image to them, layered over the illuminated chart that measures perception against reality. As such, the Reality Checking Device is intended to act as a kind or oracle, addressing the possibilities for one's future, and acting to temper, as the artist states, "a society in which anxieties have become a lifestyle choice."