Stochastic Oracle

I Ching or Yi Jing (Chinese: 易經) uses a type of divination called cleromancy, a form of sortition in which an outcome is established exactly by research or calculation by means that normally would be considered random, such as the rolling of dice or tossing of coins, but are sometimes believed to reveal the will of God, an oracle or other supernatural entities. A set of six numbers between between 6 and 9 are turned into a hexagram. A hexagram in this context is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines. This figure can then be looked up in the book of I Ching to define a meaning.

HOW TO USE THE ORACLE

• Have a question in mind, such as Where should I eat today during lunchbreak? or What is the purpose of mosquitos?
• Start throwing (click) the numbers
• A Hexagram will form in front of your very eyes (on the screen)
• The oracle will calculate trigrams and the resulting hexagram
• Furthermore the oracle calculates a fitting image of Some-no-one concording to the oracle's output
• This could be Some-no-one you know or don't know yet. Keep your eyes peeled for those eyes when you go outside.

Assets from the component "Some-no-one" have been utilized to serve as a base for generating seemingly random portraits and outcomes.

As a matter of fact, the only randomness is the throwing the six numbers for the Grams in the beginning.

The following snippet generates a number ranging from 0 to 10. If the numbers goes over 5, it will turn the Gram into a dark line. If it is below 5, it will become a light line.

CODE

if(mouseClicks == this.id && this.shuffled == false) {
  this.shuffled = true;
  this.random = Math.random(1)*10;
  if(this.random > 5) this.darkLine = true;
 }

After throwing Grams, a very naive recognition algorithm will sort the different combinations into their respective Trigrams.

The names of trigrams can be found anywhere on the internet, but here they are also in Array form.

CODE

let trigrams = ["Heaven", "Earth", "Thunder", "Water", "Mountain", "Wind", "Flame", "Lake"];

if(  grams[0].darkLine == false  && grams[1].darkLine == false  && grams[2].darkLine == false) upperTri = 0;
else if(grams[0].darkLine == true  && grams[1].darkLine == true  && grams[2].darkLine == true) upperTri = 1;
else if(grams[0].darkLine == true  && grams[1].darkLine == true  && grams[2].darkLine == false) upperTri = 2;
else if(grams[0].darkLine == true  && grams[1].darkLine == false  && grams[2].darkLine == true) upperTri = 3;
else if(grams[0].darkLine == false  && grams[1].darkLine == true  && grams[2].darkLine == true) upperTri = 4;
else if(grams[0].darkLine == false  && grams[1].darkLine == false  && grams[2].darkLine == true) upperTri = 5;
else if(grams[0].darkLine == false  && grams[1].darkLine == true  && grams[2].darkLine == false) upperTri = 6;
else if(grams[0].darkLine == true  && grams[1].darkLine == false  && grams[2].darkLine == false) upperTri = 7;

if(  grams[3].darkLine == false  && grams[4].darkLine == false  && grams[5].darkLine == false) lowerTri = 0;
else if(grams[3].darkLine == true  && grams[4].darkLine == true  && grams[5].darkLine == true) lowerTri = 1;
else if(grams[3].darkLine == true  && grams[4].darkLine == true  && grams[5].darkLine == false) lowerTri = 2;
else if(grams[3].darkLine == true  && grams[4].darkLine == false  && grams[5].darkLine == true) lowerTri = 3;
else if(grams[3].darkLine == false  && grams[4].darkLine == true  && grams[5].darkLine == true) lowerTri = 4;
else if(grams[3].darkLine == false  && grams[4].darkLine == false  && grams[5].darkLine == true) lowerTri = 5;
else if(grams[3].darkLine == false  && grams[4].darkLine == true  && grams[5].darkLine == false) lowerTri = 6;
else if(grams[3].darkLine == true  && grams[4].darkLine == false  && grams[5].darkLine == false) lowerTri = 7;

PICKING A SILHOUETTE

The silhouette as the body is picked in accordance with the lower trigram, which is traditionally calculated first when looking up the hexagram from a 8 × 8 trigram matrix.

There are 8 silhouettes – as many as there a trigrams. The same lower trigram will therefore always result in the same silhouette.

PICKING EYES

Since there are 30 eyes, the data base is short by two pairs of eyes, otherwise the resulting hexagram nuber could easily divided by two (64 / 2 = 32) to match the amount of eyes.

Instead, a modulo operation (Euclidean division) is now in place and responsible for picking the eyes.

A live demo can be found here: http://julian-h.de/so/index.htm

If you want to try out the code / modify it, you can download it from Github: https://github.com/ndsh/stochastic-oracle

BUILD YOUR OWN ORACLE

Requirements

• Web server (Online server or local, eg. Apache, XAMPP or MAMP)
• Programming knowledge (Javascript / p5js) – if you'd like to extend or modify the code (Graphically, programatically)
• Use of a graphical environment such as Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, etc. – if you are interested in modifying the assets

Install

• Download the Github repository
• Put it into a easy to reach location on your server, eg. http://yourserver.com/oracle/

Modify

• Modifications on the HTML file are done inside the file index.htm
• Modifications on the CSS file, for styling purposes, can be done via the style file in the sub-folder src: style.css
• The main application can be found in the sub-folder src: sketch.js
• The sketch.js file can be opened with any text editor
• Assets (or also called sprites) are found in the sub-folder assets
• Eyes have a fixed size of 533 × 226 pixels. This is the original size of the sprite, which is futhermore divided by the factor of 2.2 resulting in an image that is consequently 242 × 102 big and placed on the canvas.
• Replace eyes by swapping out the *.png files with your own ones. New ones, e30.png, e31.png and so, are not registered as of now.
• Silhouettes can be found in the sub-folder assets/silhouette