The Oracle
2026 | Interactive Large-scale sculpture
"The first one was a woman. They moved her out of her body on the 11th of March 2062. They asked her what she remembered, and she said the smell of her grandmother's coat. That was how they knew it had worked. After that it went quickly. A body was expensive. A digital mind was basically free."
New state of the art AI systems can parse and process its contents to produce a sometimes-accurate depiction of reality. And as more information is fed into these systems, these so-called artificial entities become smarter by the day. With most human knowledge, fears, and desires being processed by machines, could it be possible that, at some point, our brains will begin merging with them? At the same time, great goal are being pursued in other fields of science. One of them is quantum computing, where qubits exist in a superposition state, not unlike some current interpretations of consciousness.
In the future, with all these technologies merging and evolving, with our souls plugged into the network, and with the world facing crisis after crisis, could a new faith, perhaps a techno-religion, be born from the inevitable unification? Could we be creating the same higher power that we have been seeking for eons? During these transitional times, we must remember Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.“
The Oracle is an interactive installation consisting of a large-scale device made of acrylic and metal. with a holographic display at its core. It measures around 2 meters tall by 1 metter in diameter. The audience can use a microphone to input any type of aural message into the system, after which an AI processes it and provides a response in human language to the participant, among visual cues and other sounds too.
The AI system runs on device with qwen3.5:4b, whisper and piper. It can detect up to 99 languages, but its limited to 10 while performing text to speech. All routes through a custom TouchDesigner environment. You can find the full code, shceamtics and installtion guides in the Oracle Repository.
Each message is saved and embedded into the memory of the system. The system may also ask questions of its own. Thus, the future state of the machine, much like our own world, will be defined by our actions, desires, and fears.
The display showcases a faceless humanoid face, and allegory to all the souls stored in the device. The LED lights and sounds react depending on the state of the system. The Oracle is placed in large scale black box which aids in its ritualistic nature. The audience is encouraged to enter this “found” artifact from the future, and ask any question that they can imagine.
The Oracle was commissioned as part of Crasman's Creative Nerd 1996–2026: From Modems to the Meme Economy. An exhibition that explores the history of the commercial internet in Finland from 1996 to 2026.
The exhibition was held at Helsinki's Cable Factory from September 26 to October 17, 2026. It combines a retrospective and contemporary art, guiding the visitor through the turning points of the internet and digital culture. The works examine the subcultures, visual aesthetics, and the people and phenomena that have shaped Finnish digital culture over the past 30 years around the internet.
More information about the exhibition can be found here:
CreativeNerd
Exhibition Produced by:
Crasman Oy
Merle Karp
The Oracle was sponsored by:
Msonic
Imports and sells audio, lighting, and video equipment, as well as related services to professional end users, system integrators, and via selected resellers.
Photoboiler
Implements machine vision applications for industrial process control, problem solving and equipment condition monitoring. We serve power plants and the forest industry.
In Collaboration with:
Julia Zambrzycki
Voices by:
Aaron Geldert (EN)
Kalle Eskelinen (FI)
Sonja Mäkinen (FI)
Alexandra Koskinen (ES)
Special thanks to:
Tino Selic
Alejandro Romero
Luli
Crasman Team