“Divination Games / Computational Games”
Title:
- Divination Games / Computational Games
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Artist Statement:
Existing throughout history and culture, in both sacred and profane contexts, games and computation devices intersect and co-evolve, serving not only to entertain, but also to provide alternate histories and clairvoyant predictions into distant futures. Games and calculators are thus time machines that collapse spatial and temporal horizons into an everywhen. This media archeological installation explores these overlapping genealogies of computation, divination, and games.
The key element of the installation is the Go game board which – in different historical eras – has operated as an abacus, a divinatory device, a game, a computer, and inspiration for the QR code. This installation traces the evolution from the Go board to the abacus, to the computer to evoke the globally shared cultural heritage of games as divinatory devices. It works to remind us that before computer games, games were computers.
While the contemporary phenomenon of videogames and digital computation has narrowed understandings of games, this installation opens-up the playful interactive poetics of fortune telling within contemporary and ancient games to highlight enduring motivations to access deep knowledge and temporal truths.
