The Oracle: Ritual for the Future (for Humans and Non-humans)

Immersive Experience: XR #Art #Immersive #Interactive #Social #Performance #Intimate #Sensual #AI-critical #Speculative #Futuristic #Posthuman #Philosophical #Experimental #Research Driven #Theatre #Media Art #Innovation #Art & Technology

TITEL; The Oracle: Ritual for the Future (For Humans and Non-humans)

DIRECTOR: Victorine van Alphen

SYNOPSIS

The Oracle is a thought-provoking performance about the evolving relationship between humans, bodies and AI. Blending personal story with an eerie systemic presence, participants delve into sensuality, death, agency and irreversible change.

LONG SYNOPSIS

The Oracle is a futuristic immersive performance-ritual that explores the deep entanglement between human beings, technology, and (AI-generated) image culture. It invites and encloses eight participants into an intimate 360-degree screen environment.

The screens function as agents and mirrors – reflecting and reshaping our perceptions of self, body, and an elusive ‘humanness’. Participants are guided by a live droid performer and a drone companion through a symbolic, interactive journey that blends ritual, performance, confrontation and immersive installation into a single living system.

Participants shift between moral choice and passive absorption, navigating a choreography that is as much social as it is audiovisual. They must negotiate moments of peer censorship, physical ritual, and shared decision-making, positioning themselves within the unfolding narrative. While technology takes a central role, the experience remains deeply personal, confronting visitors with moments of vulnerability, intimacy, and catharsis.

At its heart, The Oracle is not a spectacle of technology, but a reflection on it. Questioning the Western ideal of the autonomous human, it instead proposes a view of the self as fluid, formed and reformed through systems larger than us. “Not ‘another AI show,’ but a ritual of collective experiencing: confronting danger and seducing with the non-human. Symbolic, embodied, and emotionally resonant.”

Running time:

60 minutes
Original title:

The Oracle: Ritual for the Future (For Humans and Non-humans)

CREDITS
Artist: Victorine van Alphen | AI-researcher: Valentin Vogelmann | 3D Artist: Jacco Kooistra | Production: Naomi van Dijck I Immersive Setup: Bram Snijders & IDlab | Performance: Esther Noyon | Music: Merlijn Nash | Sound: Giel van Geloven | Advisors: Berthe Spoelstra, Nienke Huitinga & Yannick Noomen | Technical Team: Katia Landman and Bram Buijs Made possible through the funding of Immerse // Interact Stimuleringsfonds and the NetherlandsFilmFestival fellowship. | In collaboration with IDlab “Poetic laboratory for digital technologies.” | Part of The Academy of Theatre and Dance, Amsterdam. | Special thanks to the Research Group Netherlands Filmacademy

Prod:

Studio Brave New Human / Victorine van Alphen and Naomi van Dijck

Co-prod:

IDLab (Academie voor Theater en Dans, Amsterdam), NL

Completed:

14 November 2025
Language:

English subtitles for ‘mental voice’ (Mostly silent/no voice with sporadic dutch voice fragments)

Filmografie regisseur:

a.o. Films (jaartal, genre) + awards,

The Oracle: Ritual for the Future (2025, Immersive Experience), Netherlands Filmfestival Fellowship 2024, Filmfund Interactive Grant 2025
This is as naked as I could get (2025, video work for public space) commissioned by Centraal Museum Utrecht)
IVF-X: Posthuman Parenting in Hybrid Reality (2021, VR/XR), Golden Calf, Gouden Kalf Beste Digitale Cultuurproductie 2021, Selectie Narrative, visual & technological innovation Bremen FilmFest 2022, Selectie XR Competition NewImages Festival 2023
Two is Game Over (2020, Experimental/Essayistic Film) MACA Moving Arts Centre Amsterdam, graduation with distinction at Master of Film Netherlands Filmacademy
Ebenbild (2016, Poetry film) Commissioned & Produced by Zebra Poetry Film festival & Haus für Poésie and Filmwerkstatt Münster)
Fatherfigures (2014, experimental film) Cooper Union for the advancement of science and art Scholarship, NYC)

Festival selections and awards if applicable:

The Oracle: Ritual for the Future
- Ars Electronica Festival 2025
- Netherlands Filmfestival Digital Culture 2025
- International Documentary Festival Amsterdam 2025
- Staging Realities Salzburg 2026
IVF-X: Posthuman parenting in Hybrid Reality
- Patchlab Digital Art Festival, Krakau Poland 2024
- NewImages Festival, Paris 2023
- Festival Mix Brasil, Sao Paolo Brazil 2022
- Neuchatel International Fantastic Filmfestival, Zwitserland 2022
- Bremen Filmfest, Germany 2022
- San Francisco Fronzen Film Festival, USA 2022
- Reproduction Otherwise (Group exhibition), 7-10/24-11-2022, MU Hybrid Art House (Dutch Design Week 2022), Netherlands
- Kaohsiung Filmfestival, Taiwan 2021
- Netherlands Film Festival 2021
- Imagine Filmfestival, Netherlands 2021