Parasocial Alchemy is an interactive work in which a locally run AI language model talks with the viewer in real time, generating visual and atmospheric shifts shaped by the tone of their speech. This work examines our relationship with contemporary AI predictive systems, positioning AI as an ambient atmospheric presence embedded in climate systems, emotional extraction, and affective labour. AI now predicts and shapes aspects of daily life, influencing how reality is both perceived and constructed. Centered on a speculative AI figure modelled on Hecate, the piece is conceived as a warning threshold where prophetic divination and contemporary AI infrastructures converge. Hecate is the goddess of transitional spaces, of the threshold between worlds. The work connects ancient divinatory practices, reading signs in sky, storm, and landscape, with contemporary AI systems that read patterns in language and data streams. It situates AI not as a neutral tool, but as materially connected with climate crisis, engineered relationality, and extraction. The visuals in the work are machine hallucinations generated from human brain scans of emotional states, sourced from an open access dataset and trained into a locally run AI model. The result is an image space that appears haunting and ancient but is only pattern matching, without ever truly understanding.

The Future is Open Soltice Arts Center Navan

20 June – 29 August 2026