O-Machine
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Aissa Santiso, Aurora Del Rio, Sophie Deligiannaki
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The O-Machine is a machine that functions as an oracle to generate predictions from two different systems: a living system that uses Stichococcus algae, and a speculative system based on market fluctuations in cryptocurrencies.
Stichococcus algae are a type of blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria. They are responsible for the origin of life as we know it, as they have transformed the atmosphere of the Earth by producing oxygen, thus causing the great oxygenation event: the first mass extinction of non-anaerobic organisms. As a result of human activity and industry, blue-green algae are now overgrowing in the Baltic Sea, and their reproduction and decomposition are suffocating marine life.
The second system uses cryptocurrencies. This is a purely speculative system created by humans. Human technologies are currently causing massive changes in the Earth’s system, including its atmosphere, leading to major species extinctions.
The O-Machine generates and confronts two predictions from these systems. In what can resemble a game, the data collected by the systems is translated into poems, which are printed when a ritualistic performance activates the machine.
Bio Art + Oracle Machine
Micro Algae -growth of living organisms in the Biofilia Laboratory at the Aalto University. Growth of algae has been carried out by the scientific researcher Larisa Chernyaeva.
Algorithm of divination
The Oracle generates the divinations from two input sources: a light sensor close to the algae tubes, and an online crypto market cap that pulls in real time the Bitcoin status value.
Each source generates its own divination depending on the variation of the input data. This is how the machine becomes an autonomous oracle being, leaving the human control desire out of its logic sequence.
Poems of divination
The source texts that build divinations were extracted by several poems from Octavio Paz due his conceptual relation with divination tools such the I Ching oracle during his art practice.
Process of work
The O-Machine came out from a collaborative art assignment at The 21st Century Art & Science Lab lecture by the professors and artists Laura Beloff (Ph.D.) and Juan Duarte Regino (artist-researcher) in Aalto University. The lecture has been developed within the intersection of two labs: Biofilia Lab and the Aalto FabLab.
This is an oracle machine prototype developed in collaboration with two soul artists: Aurora Del Rio and Sophie Deligiannaki.
AISSA SANTISO 