February 14, 2025 Fall 2024
Scripting is Scrying speculates on ways to build harmonious relationships between machines, humans and non-humans through divinational practices. We challenge the notion that computation began in the so-called Global North and that technology must be devoid of sacred principles. We also analyze how western and capitalist hegemonies have shaped technology to serve systems of oppression and extraction. Throughout the 10-week period, participants engaged with new computational tools/concepts—randomness, Markov chains, and machine learning—to develop their own browser-based oracles. Alongside technical lessons, we delved into readings and listenings that served as seeds for discussion. We looked at indigenous cosmologies, Afrofuturist visions, the sacred potential of digital artifacts, and the protocols and computation embedded in rituals. We asked questions like:
- How might we relate to technology differently if we consider the resources and systems behind its making?
- How can it (we) be generative rather than extractive?
- Whose perspectives and voices are encoded into our tools?
- How can we more deeply consider intention, trust and reciprocity when designing digital experiences?
Projects as Portals
Throughout the course, students developed four projects, each building toward a final oracle that synthesized their explorations.
Project 1: Randomness as Divination
Students began with p5.js and the random() function to craft oracles that leveraged randomness. We discussed the importance of randomness in many ritual practices and different ways entropy is created and utilized as an opening for influence from other realms.
Susie Xu - Fortune Cookie Generator. Main screen (left) reads: “Crack the Cookie,” and generated result: “Do you believe reality?”
Paola Mosso - Data Center of Affects, English version, first iteration. In a reimagined data center, message from the North Chilean desert bloom seed: “May their revolution give them a piece of red sky”Project 2: Generative Text with Markov Chains
Students used Markov Chains to develop a generative browser-based oracle. We discussed networked rituals, mythmaking and storytelling. Students also spent time developing an origin story and context for their oracle as well as the textual data that their oracle sourced from to produce 'readings'.
Sam Chirtel’s extensive origin story imagines the return of Parliament-Funkadelic's Mothership as an intelligent alien artifact to “spread wisdom and dissolve all borders.”
Luwin “Boom” Changco - Buwan (Prayer). This oracle asks one to “offer a prayer to the collective.” The generated result: “I saw an angel come down from heaven, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, and knock: if any man hear my voice, Worthy is the angel of the nations. After this I beheld, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having seven heads and ten horns.”
Juno A - Rock Oracle, second iteration. Buttons read: “smash the rock” and “choose a shard”. Message generated: “tomorrow is a good day for shoplifting”Project 3: Data-Driven Divination with Teachable Machine
For this project, students trained machine-learning models using Teachable Machine and worked with their model to develop a browser-based oracle with p5.js. During this project, we discussed the relationship between semiotic systems and translation in divination rituals.
april qian’s honk[honk] asked Teachable Machine to distinguish a goose honk from a car honk, looking at semantic commonalities between human-made objects and nonhuman creatures in urban environments.
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John-James Laidlow - Familiar Footsteps. Familiars have visited you in the night, and only the digital tool can see and interpret the tracks left behind on your skin to tell you which animal it was. Button text: “consult grimoire.” Generated: “HARE”Final Projects
It was during this time that we began a practice of starting each class with a student-led ritual such as a collective tarot reading or guided meditation. This grounding practice put us into our bodies and connected us to one another even through the virtual boundaries.
For their final project, students expanded on one of their earlier projects or created something entirely new. During the final weeks we discussed how through developing a ritual, one can really consider levels of access, protection, and reverence in designing the performative and interactive elements of the experience. For example, is the ritual performed only by the diviner or in a specific context? Is the ritual performed in a specific place or time? These considerations were beautifully exemplified in the work of our guest lecturers Cy X and Zai Aliyu. Students also embraced these intentions as a practice in holding what is sacred: dre jacomé’s project Mundos is her own personal oracle as a personal study of Andean cosmology.
Anonymous - Radio. This project is intended to be experienced by those in the Chinese diaspora. Text from third screen: “60 years after the strict CCP regime and 7000 miles away in America, a 1960s Shanghai Red-Lantern radio sits in your grandmother’ home. you turn the dial, and hear a familiar tune, a familiar voice.”
Ahmed Alawadhi - Sudoku Bouquet (min Allah). A downloaded amulet from this Islamic ritual, with text: الرَّحْمن (al-Rahman in Arabic), one of Allah’s many names, invoked as an answer to sharing and/or seeking one’s emotionsStudent final projects explored many interconnected themes: ancestral lineages, cultural practices, non-dominant narratives and folklore, and alternate realities, realms, and timescapes. June Maas adapts the Norse World Tree mythology; the mythical squirrel is the diviner who reads one’s fortunes in Ogham inscribed on the tree’s branches.
Christine Liao - Tailor’s Story Oracle, https://muvivid.github.io/tailor-story-oracle/. As a storytelling machine, this oracle uses her grandfather’s belongings as a proxy to retrieve his spirit and make connections across generations. Text in Mandarin and English: “What is he like in your memory? What do his belongings want to say? Click on a floating object to start a conversation with him!”
Celine Lassus - Hi do u have the capacity? The participant asks for permission to activate the land servers through this land payment chat room that pulls from text messages between comrades/besties. Text: “Hi, do you have the capacity?”, “Sorry Asking for how feeling anxious can do u have our moments so far” I feel like [emoji with tear] I hear u have the night <3 you offer so I don’t really need time. I understand No I hear u pointed out they’re overstepping a…Another critical topic was the re-imagined technological relationships to the earth and environment. In Alice Sends A Secret Message to Bob, Hitesha Ukey’s oracle reflects on the internet being a vast network of human connections, analyzing also the extraction of personal data and earthly minerals for its making. For her oracle, Nanna Debois Buhl combined CERN’s study of clouds and cosmic rays conducted at CERN with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Aiyo Cheboi is conceptualizing and nurturing a SCOBY heart as an oracle. They are experimenting with physical computing hardware, like heart sensors, and sound data to serve as portals to digital space and as a medium for this interspecies relationship.
Many resonated with how the course and the concepts of mysticism and ritual allowed for a slow and intentional approach to technology, that we hope carries on with how we build and interact with computation and machines as artists, creatives, and technologists.
Murilo Gasparetto - Candlelarium. Text: “tuning in, resonating into harmony”, “together, we will fortify our link. three blows into the microphone gets you closer to the oracle.” Participants are encouraged to take a daily moment into slowness to seek advice on major life topics.