Exploring Consciousness

Our project began with a question: “What if AI could take on the role of Socrates? Not to provide answers, but to ask meaningful questions?” We imagined an AI that could engage us in spiritual reflection and collective introspection, blurring the boundary between ritual and technology.

But as we experimented, we encountered an unexpected limitation: the AI’s questions were hollow. Predictable. Boring. It didn’t provoke anything deeper; it couldn’t hold the spiritual weight we were searching for. This failure became a turning point.

Instead of forcing the AI to act like a sage, we turned inward.

Our final video centers on a raw, intimate recording of a group member in a dissociative state, reading a poem written in that very condition. This spontaneous shift in direction became our real ritual—unplanned, vulnerable, and deeply human. The poem, filled with fragmentation, longing, and self-questioning, embodied what the AI could not: emotional truth.

Through this piece, we moved away from digital abstraction and towards lived experience. The camera lingers not on digital interfaces or machine learning fantasies, but on a body—present, disconnected, and searching for grounding. Sound and visuals mirror the dissonance of dissociation, allowing the audience to feel the rupture between self and world, mind and machine.

What began as a speculative future about AI’s spiritual potential became a reflection on its emotional limitations. In that pivot, we discovered our real message: not all questions need answers, and not all rituals can—or should—be digitized.