In late 2023, a first-hand close encounter with mass logging and terraforming in regional Victoria shook me to my core. In the months followed, I became obsessed with Naarm/Melbourne CBD’s underground City Loop expansion project, as well as the state-shaping Suburban Rail Loops that promised to create jobs and vastly improve middle suburb public transport connectivity. These sorts of mega projects, often commanding various tunnel boring machines, boast about their punch & might to carve v01d under and through the Land.

“...the mutil*ted stratum quivers and dislodges herself from the flaking shotcrete, weeping from no eyes and slowly shuffles away. At this depth, hers is crix-croxxed by fissures & aquiferous, bladesilvered like a night sky after the sandstorm. Our quotidian angel...”

But when the v01dmachines have stopped, where to next? Under a striking Vermi/i0n night sky, in the aftermath of an ebbed sandstorm, 𝕾𝖎𝖌𝖎𝖑 𝕮𝖗𝖞𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖊𝖉 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕲𝖑𝖞𝖕𝖍 𝖔𝖋 亞 casts a spell in all sixty-four cardinal directions:::a spell to bind, to protest, to curse and to destroy; to conjure and command my ancestral guardian beasts against the never-ending a<<eleration...

In late 2023, a first-hand close encounter with mass logging and terraforming in regional Victoria shook me to my core. In the months followed, I became obsessed with Naarm/Melbourne CBD’s underground City Loop expansion project, as well as the state-shaping Suburban Rail Loops that promised to create jobs and vastly improve middle suburb public transport connectivity. These sorts of mega projects, often commanding various tunnel boring machines, boast about their punch & might to carve v01d under and through the Land.

“...the mutil*ted stratum quivers and dislodges herself from the flaking shotcrete, weeping from no eyes and slowly shuffles away. At this depth, hers is crix-croxxed by fissures & aquiferous, bladesilvered like a night sky after the sandstorm. Our quotidian angel...”

But when the v01dmachines have stopped, where to next? Under a striking Vermi/i0n night sky, in the aftermath of an ebbed sandstorm, 𝕾𝖎𝖌𝖎𝖑 𝕮𝖗𝖞𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖊𝖉 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕲𝖑𝖞𝖕𝖍 𝖔𝖋 亞 casts a spell in all sixty-four cardinal directions:::a spell to bind, to protest, to curse and to destroy; to conjure and command my ancestral guardian beasts against the never-ending a<<eleration...

3 as in our celestial entropy wants to reimagine a framework for participatory oracles. I also want to write you a poems and a spell for vivid dreams.

... and it all began with a dream. A couple months ago I came across Sandra Gilbert’s poem the Fog Dream. I became obsessed with the idea of quotidian oracles that dissipated as unexpectedly as it materialised: news from a phone call / a conversation with a stranger in the city / waking to the murmur of a southerly wind...

I wondered if there were more room for these unanswered 'slow feathers' to take place in our collective consciousness. I wondered if we are all looking for the same thing all along. So I reappropriated a commercial receipt printer as an oracle machine, dressed up an altar made out of wood and concrete, and trained a language model and a text-to-image model to print you spells as you ground some herbs and spices. The oracle machine generated unique poems and images on a scroll with each interaction, interpreting the cadence of your motion of grinding with the mortal + pestle. Afterwards, you could put the scroll in a mesh sachet along with your selection of ground scent, and take it home with you. ~~Place under your pillow for a vivid dream~~

Over the course of the exhibition, a total of 103 poems and 84 images were generated; oracles were delivered; people texted me over the ether to tell me their dreams. It was such a beautiful experience to design, learn and make something so deeply communal yet personal, profound yet strange.

3 as in our celestial entropy wants to reimagine a framework for participatory oracles. I also want to write you a poems and a spell for vivid dreams.

... and it all began with a dream. A couple months ago I came across Sandra Gilbert’s poem the Fog Dream. I became obsessed with the idea of quotidian oracles that dissipated as unexpectedly as it materialised: news from a phone call / a conversation with a stranger in the city / waking to the murmur of a southerly wind...

I wondered if there were more room for these unanswered 'slow feathers' to take place in our collective consciousness. I wondered if we are all looking for the same thing all along. So I reappropriated a commercial receipt printer as an oracle machine, dressed up an altar made out of wood and concrete, and trained a language model and a text-to-image model to print you spells as you ground some herbs and spices. The oracle machine generated unique poems and images on a scroll with each interaction, interpreting the cadence of your motion of grinding with the mortal + pestle. Afterwards, you could put the scroll in a mesh sachet along with your selection of ground scent, and take it home with you. ~~Place under your pillow for a vivid dream~~

Over the course of the exhibition, a total of 103 poems and 84 images were generated; oracles were delivered; people texted me over the ether to tell me their dreams. It was such a beautiful experience to design, learn and make something so deeply communal yet personal, profound yet strange.

青qīng铜tóng器qì, or ancient Chinese ritual bronzeware, were excavated in the tombs of royalty and the nobility. But before they became grave goods, their unapologetically brutalist forms made them ideal vessels for ritual offerings of food and drink, in ceremonies to ancestors, deities or spirits.

Heavily inspired by these early bronze designs, I set out to build a life size sculpture for a performance in January. While embracing the stunning form and patterns, I made an effort to subvert the caste & imperialism alluded to by such concoctions, since they were almost only afforded by the rich and the incumbent. So I made a cradle, with the spear piercing right through the centre, acting as a third leg.

Cradles are our first beds. It served such an important role while we cried, weaned and grew. Yet we don’t remember it — a phantom of a bed that we all left behind in our psyche. This too perhaps eclipses my experience as a diasporia who was raised in a culture but lives in another. Now standing six foot tall my baby tongue still stutters. Home is only a spectrum. Memories wax and wane, give way to smog.