the one who knows

Giacomo Piazzi, Ben Olsen
Interaktive Installation, 2018
Master Interface Cultures

The movement of a number within a question:
“the softest substance is carried in the hardest.”
Though opaque in its machinery,the Oracle speaks and offers itself as sacral.
Approach and ask!
“Who are you?” it responds.

When we don’t know, we ask one who does. When we search the Internet we place our hope that there is an answer out there. But what if there are millions of answers to a question? How to sort through the avalanche of results that comes when we ask the Internet a question? This is where we place our trust. This work provides a web search not based on the mysterious algorithms behind Google Search or other authorities at the gateway of the vast panopticon of the Internet, but an ancient one – the I Ching, or the Book of Changes, an ancient Chinese divination text. It queries the web with your question and, using it, applies the principles of Book of Changes to shape the answer into an even bigger question – how do we make sense? Abandoning direct causality as an axiom, it addresses the subjective condition of the questioner directly, and helps erode the psychic repression at the hands of authority by moving the spiritual agency back into the hands of the user

Exhibition at: IC at ars electronica 2018, Linz, Austria