The Oracle of Spirit Lake
CREATIVE DIRECTION // PERFORMANCE // ART DIRECTION // AUDIOVISUAL PRODUCTION
Hulaween is the premier Halloween festival in the US, and this year I wanted to make the scariest costume I possibly could for our ~20,000 guests.
I’m Justin Bolognino, and for the past three years, I've been the Creative Director of the immersive world at the heart of Hula, Spirit Lake, which is arguably the most deeply human creative endeavor I’ve ever had the responsibility to direct.
With over four hundred of the most incredible people coming together with, as our Creative producer Rüts so eloquently says, with “soft hearts and rough hands” to build the ultimate “trick or treat” imaginable. Every type of builder, maker, doer, and lover, using every form of tool imaginable to deliver miracles that could only come through this collective creative human intelligence. Call it… Superintelligence.
Delightful confusion, if at times scary, was the goal.
In this age of insular algorithmic bubbles, delivering ideas that may challenge your worldview is one of the best services I can provide as an artist.
At the heart of Spirit Lake, the lake show features an immersive audio-visual spectacle projected onto a giant water mist screen at the center of the lake. This year, I made three hours’ worth of swirling psychedelia unique only to the sacred land of the Spirit of Suwannee. Here’s a quick taste of the lake show, with visuals by Raul, cut to Mindchatter music, with lighting and laser design by Helm.
My dream over the past three years doing the show has been to take this insane linear show to the next level by making it participatory and interactive with our beloved audience. But… how?
While working with Young & Sick on the art, he sent over this wild-looking multi-faced, single-eyed creature as an art option, and I was immediately struck with inspiration: this thing would be the Oracle of Spirit Lake.
The Art by Yound & Sick that inspired the vision of the Oracle of Spirit Lake, along with the full credits of the best experience creatives on the planet.
What if we could make the Oracle fully interactive, like the Oracle of Delphi, where guests could ask the Oracle a question and get an answer they may or may not seek.
Without a doubt, AI is the most divisive topic of our time, especially when it comes to creativity and art, and doubly especially for our very human-centric audience.
What then is the scariest possible Halloween costume I could come up with? What if the ultimate trick of this Halloween treat was to fool people into thinking we made a giant, holographic, real-time AI system that could answer questions in real time?
Here’s the teaser video we dropped less than a week before the show. Please note the specificity of the language to “be prepared for answers you may or may not seek.”
What if we could effectively spoof AI with the ultimate satire in the trippiest setting possible?
The Oracle of Spirit Lake is part Pythia, Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greek lore, part HAL 9000, but all… Wizard of Oz.
I put together an analog guitar effects pedal board that I manipulated with knobs in real time while answering questions. I tapped Moe “Lightbrush” Angelo to create over a dozen animated facial expressions across the emotional spectrum—and yes, he used some generative tools to augment the process. We then assigned each emotional Oracle Eye-face to a MIDI keyboard, labeled with a corresponding symbol, that I could trigger to give the massive, hovering, multidimensional holographic eyeball emotive, real-time expression.
Hidden in our tech front of house, some five hundred feet from the Oracle Booth, we did three, thirty-minute “shows” per night of the festival. Half of my answers were improvised; the other half were me reading from some of the most influential books of my life, including the Tao Te Ching, David R. Hawkins, Ken Wilber, Terence McKenna, Aldous Huxley, and more. Taking and regurgitating the author’s work was intended as part of the satAIre.
We gave out around a thousand “tickets” that gave you One Question, encouraging participants to “use it wisely!” We created the Oracle booth, a 2070s retro-future check-in complete with the Oracle Attendant, played brilliantly by Madi Schuler, who would field questions, then ask them to the Oracle through our huge immersive 17-speaker sound system.
The “One Question” ticket, if you were lucky enough to have been given one...
When ready, the Oracle would answer the question as we/us (the Oracle’s pronouns…) best saw fit. Further spoofing AI: at first, the Oracle was sycophantic and cordial, answering questions with kindness and enthusiasm. However, as with fears about AI, the Oracle grew worse over time. Sometimes it gave a nice answer, but would often hallucinate with wild results, and would even lash out at participants, becoming increasingly bellicose over time.
On Friday night, during Game 6 of the World Series, famed musician Anderson Paak stepped up to the plate to ask if the Dodgers would win the series. The Oracle spun out a hallucination, leaving Anderson momentarily confused… until the Oracle suddenly prophesied the Dodgers. At times, the Oracle did get it right in the end.
By Saturday night, the Oracle fell into chaos, as I gave insane answers and leaned hard into the guitar effects, with feedback, loops, and distortion. A passerby happening unwittingly upon the Oracle during one of these moments must have been a confusing sight to behold!
Trick or treat? The Oracle was certainly more of the former, and if you could (under)stand it in its more challenging moments, the latter.
The deepest intent was to create the ultimate Synchronicity Supercollider, where the Super-intelligence of tens of thousands of humans and one Oracle could summon the serendipitous Spirits of the lake, and I’m most proud to say it delivered in spades.
Sadly, we don’t have much pro-shot video, so I’m relying on phone videos from friends. If you have great Oracle moments, please do send them my way.
Thanks for playing!
Love,
JB
Oracle Photos by Tara Grace
The AV setup was hidden at the Front of House in Spirit Lake. Midi trigger to control faces, analog guitar effects on the voice through a Beta 58A mic. The book pictured is “Food of the Gods” by Terrance McKenna. 1 camera live feed of the Oracle Attendant not pictured.
PRODUCTION CREDITS
The Oracle is dedicated to Steph Blatt. RIP.
Creative Director + Performance: Justin Bolognino / META
Oracle Attendant: Madi Schuler / META
Creative Producer: Rüts / META
Oracle Art: Young & Sick
Animation: Lightbrush
Executive Producer: Michael Berg
Projection Tech: Jasper Mosher/Kevin Mitchelbrink
Lighting: Helm Productions
Video Song: “Tough as Nails” by Mindchatter