After Your Name

Presented on an obsolete CRT computer monitor, this interactive installation explores the long-standing impulse to assign mystical authority to computational black boxes. By typing their name into the terminal, participants trigger a hardcoded, deterministic algorithm that generates a three-line "oracle" text. Drawing from the history of early computing and media archaeology, the work highlights a paradox: despite knowing the system is driven by primitive, preprogrammed logic rather than genuine intelligence, the act of entering one's identity converts a mundane computational output into a ritualistic experience. Housing this "divination" within a retro interface strips away the slick illusion of modern AI, exposing the raw mechanism of computational fetishism. The old monitor serves as a nostalgic yet critical altar, posing a subtle, ironic question: is our reverence for automated authority driven by the intelligence of the machine, or merely by our own willingness to submit to the feedback of a black box?