Do You Believe in Magic?

Andromeda, formerly known as Cassiopeia’s daughter, will become the next Google operating system. Cassandra, princess of Troy, has become a database management system. Palantir, the seeing stone from The Lord of the Rings, is powering US counter-terrorism and predictive policing. As if haunted, we tend to rely on occult narratives from a distant past in order to understand our technological present. New worlds wear the costumes of the old, while the products of today’s technology companies are anything but fictional, and their mechanisms increasingly opaque. This project questions the effect of a rhetoric used by those who design the surface and the very core of contemporary technologies. What is the impact of mystification on our ability to understand? Do You Believe in Magic? draws the outlines of a corporate secrecy made of unicorn alchemists and wizards. Welcome home, where during a night, inanimate objects come to life and magic turns into horror.