An I Ching Reading With Two Small Robots
Project
This work is a performative system to generate and read the I Ching fortune of persons in the audience. The process is activated by a wave of the participant’s hand over a “magical”, funnel-shaped opening supported by a podium. The action activates a projected image on the floor of the room. An animation of randomized lines of light simulates the throwing of yarrow sticks, traditionally the first step in the ancient technique of an I Ching reading.
Next, a small, light-sensing robot moves through the projected image and “reads” the randomly projected lines, pausing and beeping analytically as it encounters each line. It then rotates and transmits the reading via an infrared signal to a second robot waiting to receive the information. This robot, equipped with a bamboo brush, paints two sets of three lines. Each painted line is either continuous or broken. The six lines make up the two trigrams of the I Ching hexagram. This hexagram is an index into a corresponding database of I Ching fortunes. The interpretation, which corresponds to the painted hexagram, is then projected (as English text) and read out loud by a synthetic male or female voice.
Meaning
The installation plays with opposites: random lines projected as white light, ordered lines painted with black ink; one robot reading and transmitting, the other robot receiving and writing.
The work alludes to the connections between symbol systems: first, the random lines which seem to contain a hidden truth; second, the binary code which controls the robots’ behavior; third, the system of solid and broken lines which make up the I Ching hexagram and finally, the written and spoken language (in this case, English) which can be directly understood by a human audience.
The work also illustrates how humans make meaning. There is an implicit meaningful connection between a wave of the hand, a symbolic gesture of one individual, and the final reading of the fortune. The implication is that the fortune is specific to this individual, namely the individual who waved his/her hand. The work also implies a meaningful connection between gestural processes. It is innately human to connect the first robot’s reading of the random lines, the invisible transmission of information from one robot to the next and the second robot’s painting of the hexagram. Whether these sequential systems are actually meaningfully connected to create causal relationships is a mystery. It is left for the viewer to decide, based on the viewer’s faith in chance as a generative force in the transmission of meaning.
