/mo·li·bdo·man·zi·a/
from Greek μόλυβδος -mólybdos "lead" and μαντεία, manteía, "prediction".
Divining rite that consists in the fusion of a small amount of metal - mainly lead, but also tin or zinc - in a crucible to be poured into a basin filled with water. The shape assumed by the metal is then interpreted to predict the future. The rite was practiced both by Greeks and Celts, but in particular in Campania, it was officiated on the night of Saint John, between June 23rd and 24th.
Divining rite that consists in the fusion of a small amount of metal - mainly lead, but also tin or zinc - in a crucible to be poured into a basin filled with water. The shape assumed by the metal is then interpreted to predict the future. The rite was practiced both by Greeks and Celts, but in particular in Campania, it was officiated on the night of Saint John, between June 23rd and 24th.
The ambiguous, chaotic, fractal configuration assumed by matter opens the horizon to the magical dimension: an amorphous image requires to be modified, interpreted, animated, transformed into meaningful structures and therefore transferred into a universe of meaning. The apophenic and divinatory exercise was reserved to the oracles, charismatic and powerful figures that through predictions and prophecies oriented political choices as well as individual ones.
In today's hybrid societies, where the products of technology pervade and condition our lives, is there still room for a magical and divinatory dimension? Are there still oracles to call upon? Do we still need to rely on an entity to define our choices? Oracle is a reflection on the relationship between artificial intelligence and ancestral rituals, technology and magic, on the innate human need to trace an order in the network of complex systems, to define connections, to make predictive patterns emerge.
Currently, those who possess the data, the algorithms and the computational power to organize and process them embody the figure of "digital soothsayer " (Vespignani, 2019) of our era. In the same way as the ancients they are the focus of political and economic interests, they are feared or adored. Algorithms are everywhere, their use ranges from the dimension of the individual to the global scale: we use them as elements of "technical magic" (Finn, 2018) to which we rely on a daily basis to decide which movie to see, which book to read or with which person to start a dating, or we question them to predict the success of a book, the spread of a virus, the consequences of an ecological disaster, the outcome of elections.
In today's hybrid societies, where the products of technology pervade and condition our lives, is there still room for a magical and divinatory dimension? Are there still oracles to call upon? Do we still need to rely on an entity to define our choices? Oracle is a reflection on the relationship between artificial intelligence and ancestral rituals, technology and magic, on the innate human need to trace an order in the network of complex systems, to define connections, to make predictive patterns emerge.
Currently, those who possess the data, the algorithms and the computational power to organize and process them embody the figure of "digital soothsayer " (Vespignani, 2019) of our era. In the same way as the ancients they are the focus of political and economic interests, they are feared or adored. Algorithms are everywhere, their use ranges from the dimension of the individual to the global scale: we use them as elements of "technical magic" (Finn, 2018) to which we rely on a daily basis to decide which movie to see, which book to read or with which person to start a dating, or we question them to predict the success of a book, the spread of a virus, the consequences of an ecological disaster, the outcome of elections.
