How to use it?
- Anyone seeking advice can consult the oracle, but only once a year. Anyone who asks more than one question will receive worthless answers.
- The oracle will only answer the question correctly if it is convinced that the person seeking advice will accept the advice as relevant.
- The person seeking advice must be sober and awake. She/He must be accompanied by at least one other person who will make the question public.
- Taking photos and/or filming the questioning of the oracle is expressly encouraged, as is sharing it on social media.
- The person seeking advice determines the meaning of two of the four compartment. She/He assigns yes to one compartment and no to another. The question and the assignment are publicly stated by the person seeking advice.
- The person seeking advice then takes a glass ball and inserts it into the labyrinth. If the ball lands in one of the undefined compartments, the person seeking advice repeats the process. The first ball that lands in one of the two defined compartments (yes/no) gives the answer.
- The person accompanying the person seeking advice can and should interpret the answer.
- Re-Questioning are not allowed, even not after a year.
How to mount it?
When setting up the bench, make sure that the labyrinth is leveled. This is what the calibration is for. The chain must hang exactly in the middle of the crosshairs. The feet can be finely adjusted using a wrench. To do this, use the outer screws first. The screws on the middle feet are only used to distribute the load and should be adjusted after adjustment so that they just touch the floor.
If the floor is sensitive, the bench should always be placed on cardboard discs or beer mats.
If the bench has to be moved for some reason, it must be finely adjusted before it is used again.
The story behind…
#buenavistacervera is a social art project. People are invited to workshops to build benches and other furniture for public spaces together. The objects invite social interaction. This makes the objects social sculptures in several respects. They come from such a social sculpture, the workshop. They act as an offer in the public social space and change the space as a result. They offer social interaction, which in turn generates new social sculptures (manifested in the experiences of the people who accept these invitations to interact).
As part of the #buenavistacervera project, another bench was created. This bench also invites social interaction. The “Oracle of Delphi” offers to formulate a question that can be answered clearly with yes or no. Then you let a glass ball run through a labyrinth and get an answer.
More benches for the art market you find on ARTSY.
The story behind the story…
People discover their reality through stories. Whether it is AI, Elisa or the Oracle of Delphi, people are always looking for ways to externalize decision-making. On the one hand, they want to calm themselves down by interpreting the position of the stars at their birth as fate, which predetermines their life, or by asking wise men or selected priests. On the other hand, they create complex sets of rules, evaluate with long lists and also limit the scope for decision-making in order to relieve themselves of the responsibility they feel is threatening. Whether there is only a yes or no answer to an important question, whether the answer is 42 or whether there is a detailed advice from a priestess intoxicated by the scent of lavender, the answer almost always needs to be interpreted, the prediction needs to be linked to the subjective reality of the person seeking advice.
In management consulting, there is a special solution for a stalemate in which two groups are irreconcilably opposed to each other. Instead of demanding a decisive word from management, which brings the decision but also high expected costs in the implementation, the group agrees to toss a coin. That helps. The decisive word from above leaves losers behind, who, in the worst case, continue to work against the decision. If everyone agrees to the “random decision” beforehand, no one loses face.
In some democracies in the past, members of parliament were chosen by lot, not a good place for parties.
Einstein, when asked about coincidence, said: God does not play dice. The crystal ball follows the laws of gravity. These have been known since Newton. There is a constant.
Whoever puts the ball in the entrance to the labyrinth decides where the ball will roll based on the position and time of release. There is no other way. The person seeking advice has it in their hand, in their fingers, so to speak. The oracle is just the medium. It translates what the person seeking advice brings with them.
The gravitational constant has been measured repeatedly over the last few centuries, and new values have always emerged. Now it is constant because everyone has reached a final agreement. There is no need to re-measure!
Whatever may guide the crystal ball into its orbit, it is the outspoken word, that will create reality.
