The supersti+tech project: A reinterpretation of superstition through new media

“Supersti+Tech” is a compound word of “Superstition” and “Technology”. The purpose of this project is to reinterpret superstition with new media devices through which juxtaposes and combines various paradoxical concepts such as irrational versus rational, fiction versus fact, and virtual versus real. The outcome of this project displays two interactive installations which use computer processing and mechanical design: A Fortune Tweeting Bird and A Lucky Charm Drawing Robot. The idea of A Fortune Tweeting Bird originates from the traditional Chinese bird fortune-telling which predicts one’s fortune from a card randomly picked by a bird. In my project, when a participant asks a question to the robotic bird device, the device prints out an answer by randomly choosing a real-time tweet from Twitter. A Lucky Charm Drawing Robot is a device that produces a lucky charm paper after reading a participant’s palm. In the East Asia, lucky charm papers have been believed to protect their careers from evil forces. A traditional form of lucky charm papers includes abstract sketches that are drawn with red pigments ground from Cinnabar, which symbolises power to drive away evil spirits, on a yellow paper dyed with the flowers of Chinese Scholar Tree (Oh 2003). In my project, A Lucky Charm Drawing Robot draws a random sketch with a red brush pen on a yellow paper, which is designed by computer programming based on the data of a participant’s palm conductivity. The Supersti+Tech Project was presented at EVA London Conference 2015 in the U.K. A Fortune Tweeting Bird was exhibited in Digital Futures hosted by Victoria and Albert Museum and EVA London Conference 2015 in the U.K. and won the 1st prize of The Imperica Online Arts, Technology and Media Magazine for the Best Demonstration. In 2014, A Fortune-Telling Bird, the early model of A Fortune Tweeting Bird, was exhibited at Live Herring ‘14 in Ratamo Gallery, Aalto Innovation House, and Kaapeli in Finland. In the same year, A Lucky Charm Drawing Robot was exhibited in Kaapeli