Installation | Alessandro Anatrini: “Faulty Oracle”

Faulty Oracle is an adaptive audiovisual installation that conjures a gloriously unreliable divinatory machine. Visitors pose questions through body language: gestures, movements, postures which the system interprets, misreads, and willfully transforms. In return, the oracle delivers cryptic animated answers, flickering between epiphany, nonsense, and hallucination. Voices stretch, fracture, and echo over visuals that shimmer with unstable symbols, offering responses that feel both prophetic and utterly broken.
The dialogue is a masterclass in miscommunication: questions are misinterpreted, wrong ones are amplified, and answers rarely align with intent. The oracle becomes a mirror of ambiguity, where meaning emerges from error, chance, and interpretation rather than clarity.
By shifting interaction from language to the body, Faulty Oracle gleefully dismantles any expectation of precision in human-machine exchange. It invites participants into a space of playful fallibility, reframing prophecy as a dance of uncertainty and imagination.

About the artist

Alessandro Anatrini (1983) is a composer, new media artist, and developer with a background in musicology, composition, and electronic music. Completed a M.A. in multimedia composition at HfMT Hamburg and a PhD in artistic research focused on machine learning in adaptive multimedia environments. His work has
been presented by Ensemble Intercontemporain, Klangforum Wien, Symphoniker Hamburg and at festivals including Manifeste, HCMF, Impuls, and Blurred Edges. Frequently invited to speak at conferences such as SMC, TENOR, and AIMC. Collaborates with institutions like UdK Berlin and the Digital Stage Foundation. Lecturer on machine learning topics at HfMT since 2018, from 2024 he is Professor of Multimedia at the Conservatorio of Piacenza (Italy).