The Oracle of Elsewhere is an interactive AI installation that explores migration through voice, memory and spatial visualisation.
At the centre of the work is a monumental female Oracle rendered in real time. She remains dormant until a visitor approaches.
As the visitor enters the space, she wakes, turns towards them and begins a conversation.
Rather than asking where someone belongs, the Oracle asks about movement: what made them leave, what became possible elsewhere, what they still carry from another city, what allowed them to stay, and what gives them light.
As the conversation develops, a constellation gradually forms around the Oracle.
Each response adds another point, route or trace to a temporary visual map of that encounter.
At the end, the Oracle returns something from beyond the visitor’s own story: a fragment of memory previously shared by another person.
At the centre of the work is a monumental female Oracle rendered in real time. She remains dormant until a visitor approaches.
As the visitor enters the space, she wakes, turns towards them and begins a conversation.
Rather than asking where someone belongs, the Oracle asks about movement: what made them leave, what became possible elsewhere, what they still carry from another city, what allowed them to stay, and what gives them light.
As the conversation develops, a constellation gradually forms around the Oracle.
Each response adds another point, route or trace to a temporary visual map of that encounter.
At the end, the Oracle returns something from beyond the visitor’s own story: a fragment of memory previously shared by another person.
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A Living Migration Archive
Its memory is built from material collected through my practice-based research, including:
- interviews about migration, gender, belonging and urban experience
- participant responses gathered during exhibitions
- migration routes created through public interactive installations
- future contributions explicitly left for the Oracle by participants
These fragments form a growing, anonymised archive of movement, attachment, uncertainty, care and imagined futures.
Inspace Gallery, Edinburgh, UK, Oct 2026
Real-Time Presence
The Oracle is rendered in Unreal Engine as a responsive digital figure
A camera tracks the approximate position of the participant without identifying them. This allows the Oracle to:
detect when someone enters or leaves
wake and return to sleep
shift her gaze towards the viewer
make subtle head movements
respond to changes in viewing position
The installation also experiments with head-tracked perspective and spatial parallax, making the screen behave less like a flat image and more like a window into an enclosed digital chamber.
The Oracle appears to inhabit a space behind the display, surrounded by distant archive stars, constellation routes and memory traces.
Technical Architecture
The project combines real-time 3D, computer vision, speech systems and retrieval-based AI.
Current system architecture
Unreal Engine - real-time Oracle, animation, gaze, spatial environment and constellation rendering
Webcam / computer vision - visitor presence and approximate position tracking
Microphone input - spoken interaction
Speech-to-text - transcription of visitor responses
LLM layer - controlled conversational response and thematic interpretation
Semantic retrieval - matching responses with existing archive fragments
Structured archive / database - interviews, exhibition responses and consented memories
Text-to-speech - Oracle voice output
Niagara / real-time particles - constellation points, routes, traces and spatial effects
The system is designed modularly so that the visual installation, conversational system and archive can continue to develop independently.
Current Development
The Oracle is currently being expanded as a modular interactive system.
Current development focuses on connecting more real-time components, including:
richer archive retrieval and memory matching
more responsive voice and conversational interaction
generative animation and evolving constellation visuals
real-time spatial tracking and head-tracked depth
improved text-to-speech and facial response
participant-contributed memories and live archive growth
The aim is to let the visual, conversational and archival parts of the Oracle respond to one another more fluidly, so that each encounter generates its own temporary constellation of movement, memory and connection.