Showing multiple files from different locations on the desktop

You can certainly use a symlink (ln -s) for either files or folders but you can also simply use a Mac "alias" by holding [option]+[command] while dragging the file or folder to the Desktop.

 

I suspect you could probably set up a watch folder and an automator work flow to make aliases to your desktop:

https://www.macissues.com/2014/07/16/how-to-set-up-and-use-folder-actions-on-your-mac/

 

As JohnDS suggested, maybe automator watch. Or, you could likely write a bash script and schedule it to run every hour using cron. Something like this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
monitorFolder='/folder/to/monitor'
for f in $(ls ${monitorFolder}/*pattern*)
do
ln -s "${monitorFolder}/${f}" "~/Desktop/${f}"
done

Just threw that together so test the quoting and the subshell "ls" command carefully first but this should be close.