The Space in Between
The Space in Between is an interactive installation exploring how humans construct systems to navigate uncertainty. Through ritual, language, physical interaction, and computation, the project investigates how questions become interpretations, and where meaning resides between a system and the person who consults it.
The Space in Between begins with a simple question: why do humans create systems to interpret uncertainty? The project looks at the structures behind systems of interpretation and how they transform uncertainty into something that can be questioned, processed, and given meaning. The familiar paper fortune teller serves as one of its starting points, connecting a simple childhood object with the larger idea of constructing a system that responds to a question.
Visitors enter with a question of their own and submit it through a custom interface. A mechanical ritual follows, activating a physical mechanism controlled by an ESP32 before the system produces a unique poetic reading. The reading is deliberately concise, riddle-like, and open to interpretation rather than offering predictions or direct advice. It is then printed as a physical artifact for the visitor to take away.
The research deconstructs the architecture of interpretive systems into a sequence: uncertainty → question → language → rules → interpretation → response. These principles informed the development of a custom reading protocol, written as a kind of constitution for the oracle, defining how it should respond and what it should avoid.
The accompanying research publication examines why humans create these systems, how they respond, how they are constructed, and why we trust them. It also considers the growing tendency to consult conversational AI about personal questions and uncertainty, asking what happens when a computational system takes on a role traditionally associated with interpretation.
Ultimately, The Space in Between does not attempt to prove whether an oracle can reveal truth. Instead, it asks where meaning comes from: within the system that produces the response, or within the person who interprets it?
