THE ORACLE SHOWN AT ARS ELECTRONICA 2024

THE ORACLE ⇔ TRANSCENDENCE

The Oracle explores the future of cities governed by algorithms and acts like a portal. Continuously transforming, the artwork generates an oracular vision of the near future by analysing thousands of city-wide data inputs to make predictive outputs.The machine is re-mediating all the collected data, suggesting a data consciousness, thereby implying that the artwork is thinking, and trying to predict the future. This provocative suggestion that the machine is actually conscious aligns itself with predictions of singularity to dislocate the disprupt the audience poses questions about the environemtn we will live in should this actually happen,

The Oracle is an expression of the all-seeing eye monitored by artificial intelligence, all at once. It acts as an autonomous brain seeking to make the hidden interactions between humans and non-human agents visible. This artwork speculates how AI will manifest its own 'desires' through machine learning patterns and act as a poetic metaphor for invisible agency in our cities. In another sense, the artwork operates between observation, critique, and re-imagination, seeking to decipher the landscape to communicate with us. The data used includes thousands of real time inputs from weather, pollution, bike locations, buses, trains, and news feeds. The artwork can also combine personal phone data, including an individual's real-time position and photographs. The main artistic and technical prototype is created with a custom STANZA API with neural nets and machine learning capabilities built in—heuristic functions; server scripts create neural nets running over the system. This allows the artwork to feed off AI data in real-time as the AI regenerates new patterns of information seeking constant change. The provocation is that the machine is thinking and conscious, trying to predict the future.

ART INSTALLATION. Three main sections. What is presented and experienced:

1. In appearance, the main part of the installation has twelve computational towers arranged in a circle. At the centre is an AI ‘brain’ that manifests multiple data feeds into an expression of the entangled city. This central brain thinks about the data collected from the landscape (cities) using built-in neural nets running server side in real time. It is a constantly evolving predictive system. 

2. In the middle is a round screen that acts as an all-seeing eye. This section is a live expression of whats is happening. Generated in real-time through a custom software system, it will display the entangled city by visualising all of these feeds all at once also in real time. Working example https://velocity.stanza.co.uk/entangledcities/18/

3. Inside the towers are a series of speakers creating a soundscape. Data feeds from bespoke server side neural networks are used for sonification for the artificial intelligence system as it attempts to comprehend and predict what will happen next. In effect you are listening to it thinking, the inner voice of the machine as it thinks..

Software Technology: Created in Clojure, three js, node js, and Mongo DB with a custom API for neural nets. The physical installation uses XoJo and interfaces to 12 Raspberry Pi. The sound elements use MAX MSP and RNBO, utilising Eleven Labs AI. The installation also uses feeds from scenarios created in MAKE running open AI.

Hardware Technology: The art installation comprises 300 PCB boards with custom LEDs. The central brain runs from a custom API with a neural net built in as a constantly evolving predictive system. A series of towers with custom electronics. 12 @ Raspberry Pi. Running the data / from URL API. Binary LEDs in RED light on a black background board @220. Custom PCB Mainboard colour Green @ 12. Relays on 1/0 board. Cables Colours (BLUE WHITE GREEN) cables lengths:12 Power supply plus power extension. Ethernet and 14 LAN cables. It needs live internet access. The 23-inch screen in the middle runs Three.js custom visualisation. Plus: speakers, custom amps, hub, power supplies, two Mac minis, and PC i7 Windows 10. 

Size: On floor 3m diameter circle needed mimimum and spme space to walk around it.

Initially centered on Italy, the system has since expanded to incorporate data from across Germany, France, and the United Kingdom upon request. Optional global tracking data can also be integrated, allowing the artwork to scale from the local to the planetary.

Can be shown with The Entangled Cities (https://www.stanza.co.uk/entangledcities/index.html) software on a series of projectors or screens, which would go around or next to the installation. (To be discussed)

An additional feature. Visitors can also become involved as they move about the city. They can download an app that sends GPS positional data and photos to the database to be embedded in this artwork. They therefore become participants and it becomes performative.

Real Time Data Narratives. It’s fascinating that we are connected by our past and yet it remains a central question: can we learn from our collective history? The Oracle processes thousands of data inputs to create a new perspective of the landscape of observation in real time. I am thinking about how AI and machine learning can predict the future or create positive scenarios. that move away from the dystopian. The Oracle is trying to offer alternative realities through the operations and algorithms to speculate what happens when machines control the future. We hope for the best, we hope for a bright future. Within the artwork we can see how it functions  as it runs and  processes the invisible worlds around us. The artwork is in essence continually performing, reacting to moves ahead in time.

Is it hopeful to know what the machine thinks? The provocation lies in the suggestion that the machine is not merely processing information, but actively thinking—perhaps even exhibiting a form of consciousness. It appears to be engaged in an ongoing attempt to predict the future, drawing in vast amounts of data to anticipate what comes next. This raises unsettling questions about where calculation ends and cognition begins. If the machine can model possible futures, adjust its behavior based on those projections, and refine its predictions over time, it begins to resemble a thinking entity rather than a passive tool. The provocation, then, is not simply that the machine predicts outcomes, but that in doing so it mirrors a fundamental human trait: imagining a future of technological control.

Data from weather stations and live pollution feeds are combined and augmented through neural networks to generate new, emergent patterns. This is integrated with transport data from public transit systems, allowing the work to reflect the rhythms and movements of the city. News-feed images are algorithmically manipulated by generative AI, speculating on possible political futures, while live news texts are continuously re-generated in real time as events unfold. Photographs from users’ mobile phones are incorporated into the artworks through a custom application, embedding personal perspectives within the larger data landscape. At the same time, an individual’s real-time position in the city, captured via phone GPS, becomes part of the system, spatially situating each participant within the work itself.

EXHIBITIONS.

ARS ELECTRONICA 2024

Logistics. Shipping / Transport.

12 boxes (3@122cm high 26cm by 26cm; 3@105cm high 26cm by 26cm; 6@90cm high 26cm by 26cm) Weight for each: 25kg  +

1 Crate wooden (90cm by 90 cm by 20cm) Weight: 25kg  

Total: 13 boxes total. Shipped from London.

Tech Set Up

I need internet via a black ethernet cable for the installation (I have the hubs). It needs to be long enough to reach the installation and plug into my hub. I need two power black extension cables that must have a red switch on it: only black. I need an electric screwdriver/drill to open the boxes. The installation needs a clean floor with a painted white circle 4m in diameter, or you can make a round 4m white base 20cm high out of wood. 

Set Up build. One full day. One assistants if possible is needed to unpack the boxes then one assistant is needed for the full day for the set up build: The floor needs to be cleaned and prepared before arrival and the black ethernet and black extension cables ready before arrival. TAKE-DOWN. one assistant is needed for the re-packing and take-down. 

Set Up Instructions.

Open boxes (they are fragile; handle with care; do not touch the ras pi or main pcb boards.) Note when you unwrap the buublke wrap do not touch the ras pi or custion PCB with STANZA on it. Open boxes one at a time and remove the tower inside. Unravel and unwrap it, place the packing back in the box and use the same screws and reseal the box then move onto the next box . Do unpack all at once then leave and screw on a pile and the open boxes in a pile.

The diameter of the whole installation is a 3.5m circle total. So you can walk around it. 

The system should be arranged in a 3m circle and the circular display in the middle

There is a small cut at the front of each tower for cables to go through. Do not leave the tower standing on the cables, they go through the hole at the botton.

Unpack the big crate. The circular display is fragile. The on switch is underneath. (Marked P)

You will need to get another monitor to connect to it to set up the wifi for it. Or if if fails on boot.

NOTE if screen fails to boot and shows an error switch it off and then re switch it on.

There are speaker cables on the small two towers to plug into the mac minis.

The mac-minis will both up auto boot into the sound software. 

Plug everything into the UK power adapters then you will plug these into the two cable extensions you supply. The 12 towers auto boot up.

Plug in 12 ethernet cables from the twelve towers into the two HUBS. 

Plug in the hubs into your ethernet using black cables you supply.

Maybe sure its neatly laid out like a clock in the 12 positions ...

Keywords: AI governance, social agency, machine consciousness, invisible cities, positive futures

The Oracle by Stanza took one year to make and is the result of the STARTS In the City residency.

Shots from the studio. This artwork has not been exhibited yet and I am looking for a venue for its premiere. NOTE these are rough studio videos.

This hybrid artwork is manifested by algorithmic machine learning processes interrogating real-time. data sets and the ensuing data outputs.

Questions raises

Will the cities of the future be governed by algorithms? 

Can we make a city that learns by itself (self-governing) and makes its own decisions based on open data? 

Supported by S+T+ARTS EU and Meet Digital Art Centre Milano and Stanza.

(C) STANZA

CREDIT LINE ARTWORK BY STANZA