unknown return to player

When we hope for something to happen, we try to calculate our favours: in manic repetition, we re-evaluate how our best actions could possibly add to the odds. The slot game installation unknown return to player examines this probabilistic speculation we engage in under uncertainty - and the illusions that arise in the process - as core components of hope. It frames hopeful agency not as optimism but as a wager: a risky impulse to keep investing in progressions whose outcomes are often beyond our control.

Constructed from aluminium profiles, faux leather bolstering, arcade electronics and antique fittings, the machine component of the installation examines modern gambling hardware as a medium of this tension. Engaging with the machine, visitors are invited to play Reapers of Fortune: Feral Frenzy, a virtual slot game whose logic and objectives remain deliberately opaque. Entering the familiar visual chaos of gambling without the goal of winning a jackpot leaves room to explore: the interface for alternative goals to hope for - and the agency needed to succeed.