This machine is part of ongoing research into beliefs, knowledge  and experiences- it is informed by a number of prototypes. The machine takes to an extreme a childish act, which we are discouraged from doing with story telling, and made up consequence.When I was a child I was told off constantly for flicking the lightswitches- but it was something I loved doing. I was actively dissuaded from flicking with story telling and consequence.

The machine actively disproves the stories we’re told by quantifying how many times you can flick a light switch. It offers hard evidence in the form of an LCD screen on the top of the machine that can be presented to both preacher and preachee.

Despite the numerical data, the machines remains in the realm of specualtion- it offers a piece of evidence for use by both preacher and preachee which creates a dialogue between the two (as opposed to facts). This can be Mother and Child, Teacher and pupil, and so on. The object does not sit in a home specifically, it is in constant transition, it moves from exhibition into your home, and back, on a pilgrimage, offering up evidence and preaching on it’s way.

“The pilgrimage”

After a number of tests, I took the flickerer on a pilgrimage to it’s ‘source’, which I had identified as my parents – because they told me not to flick the switches, which led me onto their parents, after which the trail went cold. I then decided I needed to take the machine to a future generation that may or may not have already been ‘brainwashed’ against flicking; taking it to my 4 year old cousin. The film above documents this process, and provides a number of conclusions, as to the machines successes and failures.

The five people used the object in very different ways and they’re resulting, ‘re-assembled beliefs’ varied accordingly, whether scared, skeptical, or easily convinced the object was demonstrably less than perfect. It did not build trust in a way that I had expected it to, where questions that I had assumed would be answered after use, were left unanswered and still up for speculation.