In this installation, the user wears a VR headset, a head-mounted lavalier microphone and VR controllers. 

Oracle is a VR installation where the user is transported onto a platform in the middle of a visionary, glitchy, semi-malfunctioning cyber space, where leftovers or reality blend with circuitry and dominated by a giant holographic oracle. 

The oracle is a figure coming from ancient Greece. She was a priestess believed to speak on behalf of the god Apollo, in a trance-like state. People seeking advice would visit her and pose questions, to which the oracle would reply always in a cryptic, mysterious way, which could not be understood literally. Instead, it was up to the supplicant to research or interpret the meaning.

This installation draws inspiration from the idea of “non-literality” of the answer and pushes it even further: the answer is a continuous re-formulation of the question. This repetition, though, is not literal. On the contrary, the question undergoes an intense sound processing which can just slightly change it or make it completely unrecognizable. The type and intensity of processing is controlled by a machine learning algorithm, which in some sense constitutes the oracle itself. However, it is the interaction of the user with the VR environment to affect how the algorithm will change the sound. These changed repetitions are different ways to look at the question, and they are the symbol of a self-enquiry, or self-analysis process. Again, it is up to the supplicant to find the threads of “truth” withing this process. 

The visitor can ask a question by touching a virtual device. They can then partially control the behaviour of the sound processing by moving five levers placed in front of the oracle. The transformation of sound is at the core of the artistic deployment of this work. While sound is transformed, also space is modified. In fact, as the reverberated sound of question is distributed in sound clouds, particle clouds are also summoned in the positions where sounds are produced. This is the current stage of development, but more transformative visual rendering techniques are going to be implemented in the future.