“Pythio: Digital Oracle” presented by Mashtalir

Symposium:

• ISEA2016: 22nd International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from ISEA2016:  

• Poetry, Text, Print, Space

• Pythio: Digital Oracle

• Tares Mashtalir

Venue(s):

• Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong SAR China

• Pythia is an interactive sonic sculpture, analyzing the audience’s speech and interpreting it into absurd or perhaps prophetic messages, the so-called divine glitch. Glitch art is a direction in art where the main expressive method is a digital error. To consult the digital oracle, an audience member starts the conversation first. Their speech becomes a harmonious sonic composition with new words, whether they are absurd, prophetic, selfreflective, or just a digitized reflection. In ancient times Pythia was the priestess presiding over the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Consulting the oracle was consulting the irrational, the otherworldly. The Pythia priestess delivered her oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapors rising from a chasm in the rock. She spoke gibberish, which temple priests interpreted as the enigmatic prophecies. These prophecies are mentioned throughout Greek classical literature.

  “… What was essential to Delphic divination, then, was the frenzy of the Pythoness and the sounds which she uttered in this state which were interpreted by the Ὅσιοι [Osioi] and the ‘prophet’ according to some conventional code of their own.” _Lewis Farnell.
  gnōthi seautón = “know thyself” _from the temple of Apollo at Delphi.

  Sound
  The voice of Pythia in the sonic sculpture is created by harmonizing the text to speech algorithm with a vocoder using Pythagorean principles, or the Circle of Fifths that first emerged during the Baroque era. The circle of fifths is a visual representation of the relationships among the 12 tones of the chromatic scale, their corresponding key signatures, and the associated major and minor keys.

  History
  Pythagoras’ name, according to some sources, means “forecasted by Pythia”. According to Iamblichus, Pythia told Pythagoras’s father, that his beautiful wife give birth to a child that would surpass all humans for beauty and wisdom and would be a greatest benefit the human race.

  PLAN
  The sonic sculpture Pythia requires Mac Pro with a fast internet connection, microphone, multichannel sound and HD projection.

  Pythia: collective unconscious
  Visualization of database collected during the two months exhibit at MARS Center in Moscow. The list of words below are the most frequently used of 161532 words spoken by Pythia:

  Привет (2.361) Translation: Hi
  Я (1.047) Translation: I
  люблю (609) Translation: love
  тебя (373) Translation: you

Video:

• Pythia : digital oracle from Machine Libertine on Vimeo.

  Пифия: цифровой оракул from Machine Libertine on Vimeo.

Category:

• Artist Talk