Shortcuts are fast leaps across information scaffolds; cartridges for accelerated time. Shortcuts imply lower costs, since they train us to become beings who are not used to staying still, pondering, or meandering. Shortcuts symbolise strategic success, and energy-saving efficiency. But in the year 2020a time of global uncertaintywe gained a new perspective on what we shortcut into. The lesson is that perhaps we need to rethink our priorities, and develop an alternative blueprint that does not prioritize shortcuts. The exhibition The Long Cut features works that investigate the remote, latent, and liminal space of technologies, and how this awareness can trigger alternative pathways and maps for our shared technological reality. More importantly, it investigates how artists find their own way of living with the hybridity of the physical and the digital. Iris Long

Feral File  The Long Cut

&ldquo;Abstract Oracle Miner 0009328437&quot; is an iteration of Guo&apos;s installation work, &ldquo;Abstract Oracle Generator.&quot; The &ldquo;miner&quot; is a virtual device producing different acronym combinations, which act like prophecies responding to questions raised by participants&mdash;or whoever is wandering in the digital world. Through rendering several complex 3D scenes, the algorithm takes the hardware performance evaluation values as random seeds to generate a &ldquo;virtual oracle.&quot; During the process, the temperature of hardware running the webpage may rise, the cooling fan may generate noises and the image rendering may slow down. In other words, the &ldquo;oracle&quot; takes the offering from the hardware&mdash;the foundational structure of the virtual world, reminding viewers that the &ldquo;virtual&quot; is by no means effortless, weightless, or light as a feather. The &ldquo;oracle&rdquo; produced by the computing power consumption is objectively &ldquo;better&quot; than other forms of human divination, and the abstraction of the conjured visions can expand participants&rsquo; imagination.

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 0009328437

