ritual_144

Ritual_144 was an experiment: a voluntary, interactive, and anonymous test situation, where participants, and not I, were given the right to vote on the question(s) of astrology and its claims, inside a specifically built “confession booth”. How did Ritual_144 work? After sharing their date of birth, participants were given two documents and were asked to vote (“correct”/”incorrect”) on the contents of these two documents: two anonymized astrological personality profiles which combined Western (12 monthly signs) and Eastern astrology (12 yearly signs). Multiplied together there were 144 distinct personality profiles which formed the basis of this project. Could the participants recognize themselves in the correct profile? One was associated with their date of birth, the other with an astrologically “opposite” date. The participants played an integral role in the realization of the project, voting according to their own private parameters, but the finalization of the project was done by me, evaluating their votes according to the parameters of astrology. I only recorded how many participants “correctly” chose their own astrological profile, and how many did not. With introspection through the unusual lens of “comparative/contrasting” astrology, Ritual_144 explored different layers and perspectives of what correct and incorrect can mean, without enforcing my own personal views. Taking an empirical, evidence-based approach on a topic such as astrology, seemed to be the correct “incorrect” way to get to something “correct” out if it for this course. The eventual “shape” of this project, the ways in which the participants would evaluate “correct” and “incorrect”, was completely unpredictable, and the results were be published online after the GOG.