160 pages
Size: 148×210 mm
Offset (color 4+4)
120g Munken Polar
First edition of 200.
Publication year: 2025.

The title «Diviner» span several new works by visual artist Mariella Otto, where «[A]» and «[B]» – a book and a video work – has been realised in collaboration with researcher Gabriele de Seta (ITA/NO). Reflecting on evolution, entropy and manipulation, these two pieces depart from working closely with a breed of speckled chicken, as well as with machine learning and generative technologies. In considering images and information through their elasticity; looking to the photograph as a record, with heritage and embedded code – while also thinking of the generated image as derived from the archive and from photographic practices – the project in various ways attempt to destabilise binary discourses and borders of truth/fiction. As ‘staged’ models – in their respective formats – [A] and [B] internalise questions on authenticity, the record, automation and the duplicate – using the black and white bird as its image of human intervention. Embracing chance, while discussing levels of control, «Diviner [A]» presents a gradual ‘coming into sense’, progressing from incomprehensible Markov chains and divinations pecked by the chickens, into theoretical writings by Otto, and de Seta, where they highlight the generative ‘as method’, creating morphologies and glitches within the context of what’s measurable, representable, and what’s not. The work has been realised with support from the Swedish Arts Grants committee.