The Oracle Machine

Abstract

The Oracle Machine is a research project and a work of art which focuses on decision making mechanisms in contemporary urban and globalised societies. The hypothesis is that there is a specific condition in post-industrial civilized territories, which can be described as lack of will, 'relapsing choice', or 'decision syndrome'. If on one side the globalised and technological world offers variety, fast communication and remote presence, on the other it weakens the relation between humans and natural environment, soothes instincts and induces disorientation, but also fragments identity in the continuous redefinition of perception and the conception of space and time. Lacan's definition of anxiety, described as the affect whose object is unknown, intersects with Heisenberg's 'Uncertainty Principle' (Heisenberg, 1925), which affirms there are no states in which a particle has both a define position and a definite momentum. When the condition of undecidability and that of anxiety are manifest, the unknown object can be interpreted as the very Self, objectified and dissipated in a number of concomitant possibilities.