Hallucinations
001
PHASE/THE ARCHIVE
002
PHASE/THE SYSTEM
of the
003
PHASE/THE VISUALS
004
PHASE/THE ENCOUNTER
July
2026
What emerges when memory
Meets machine?
Unseen
July
2026
what emerges
when memory
Meets machine.
HOTU is An artistic work on absence, AI, and emergence.
The Work
Hallucinations of the Unseen (HOTU.) is an interactive artwork created from the scientific writings and personal letters of my father who died in 1978.
From an archive, an artificial presence emerges.
It is not a simulation of him, but something new: a voice shaped by his patterns, speaking in words of its own.
Visitors are invited to enter into dialogue with it.
Every word is new.
Every word was made possible by him.
The father
a presence that thinks in his patterns but speaks its own words.
Prof. Dr. Hartmut Pilz (1934-1978) was a neurologist and psychiatrist who researched the chemistry of the nervous system.
He died at 44. His daughter Katja was eight and barely knew him.
This project is her way of getting to know her father through his own words.
A way of making his absence present, and of exploring neural networks that are, in a way, a continuation of the work he left behind
the archive
15 documents form the foundation of this project. Scientific papers published between 1966 and 1978. And Between the scientific Texts: personal letters to his wife sigrid, full of love, longing, and the ordinary details of everyday life.
“I fed my father's writings into an AI. What came back was not him. but for the first time in 40 years, the silence answered” — Katja
of the unseen
final project 2026
THE CONVERSATION
The silence breaks. Something NEW forms.
CURIOSITY
LONGING
TECHNOLOGY
DISCOVERY
THE
You can talk to it. In a live dialogue, the presence responds in real time.
Sometimes it connects a scientific finding to a sentence from a love letter.
Sometimes it asks you a question instead. It knows what it is. It will tell you if you ask.
what you can ask
you can Ask about consciousness, the brain, memory, love and what it means to leave something behind.
The presence may speculate, wonder, contradict itself or answer with another question. It may also say "I don't know."
what it cannot do
it cannot remember anything that is not part of the archive.
speak to the presence
ask a question. you may begin with consciousness, love, the brain or absence. There is no correct way to speak to the presence. The dialogue is available only during the exhibition
Hallucinations
001
PHASE/THE ARCHIVE
002
PHASE/THE SYSTEM
of the
003
PHASE/THE VISUALS
004
PHASE/THE ENCOUNTER
July
2026
What emerges when memory
Meets machine?
Unseen
July
2026
what emerges
when memory
Meets machine.
HOTU is An artistic work on absence, AI, and emergence.
The Work
Hallucinations of the Unseen (HOTU.) is an interactive artwork created from the scientific writings and personal letters of my father who died in 1978.
From an archive, an artificial presence emerges.
It is not a simulation of him, but something new: a voice shaped by his patterns, speaking in words of its own.
Visitors are invited to enter into dialogue with it.
Every word is new.
Every word was made possible by him.
The father
a presence that thinks in his patterns but speaks its own words.
Prof. Dr. Hartmut Pilz (1934-1978) was a neurologist and psychiatrist who researched the chemistry of the nervous system.
He died at 44. His daughter Katja was eight and barely knew him.
This project is her way of getting to know her father through his own words.
A way of making his absence present, and of exploring neural networks that are, in a way, a continuation of the work he left behind
15 documents form the foundation of this project. Scientific papers published between 1966 and 1978. And Between the scientific Texts: personal letters to his wife sigrid, full of love, longing, and the ordinary details of everyday life.
“I fed my father's writings into an AI. What came back was not him. but for the first time in 40 years, the silence answered” — Katja
of the unseen
final project 2026
THE CONVERSATION
The silence breaks. Something NEW forms.
CURIOSITY
LONGING
TECHNOLOGY
DISCOVERY
THE
You can talk to it. In a live dialogue, the presence responds in real time.
Sometimes it connects a scientific finding to a sentence from a love letter.
Sometimes it asks you a question instead. It knows what it is. It will tell you if you ask.
what you can ask
you can Ask about consciousness, the brain, memory, love and what it means to leave something behind.
The presence may speculate, wonder, contradict itself or answer with another question. It may also say "I don't know."
what it cannot do
it cannot remember anything that is not part of the archive.
speak to the presence
ask a question. you may begin with consciousness, love, the brain or absence. There is no correct way to speak to the presence. The dialogue is available only during the exhibition
001
PHASE/THE ARCHIVE
002
PHASE/THE SYSTEM
003
PHASE/THE VISUALS
004
PHASE/THE ENCOUNTER
July
2026
What emerges when memory
Meets machine?
July
2026
what emerges
when memory
Meets machine.
HOTU is An artistic work on absence, AI, and emergence.
The Work
Hallucinations of the Unseen (HOTU.) is an interactive artwork created from the scientific writings and personal letters of my father who died in 1978.
From an archive, an artificial presence emerges.
It is not a simulation of him, but something new: a voice shaped by his patterns, speaking in words of its own.
Visitors are invited to enter into dialogue with it.
Every word is new.
Every word was made possible by him.
The father
a presence that thinks in his patterns but speaks its own words.
Prof. Dr. Hartmut Pilz (1934-1978) was a neurologist and psychiatrist who researched the chemistry of the nervous system.
He died at 44. His daughter Katja was eight and barely knew him.
This project is her way of getting to know her father through his own words.
A way of making his absence present, and of exploring neural networks that are, in a way, a continuation of the work he left behind
15 documents form the foundation of this project. Scientific papers published between 1966 and 1978. And Between the scientific Texts: personal letters to his wife sigrid, full of love, longing, and the ordinary details of everyday life.
“I fed my father's writings into an AI. What came back was not him. but for the first time in 40 years, the silence answered” — Katja
of the unseen
final project 2026
THE CONVERSATION
The silence breaks. Something NEW forms.
CURIOSITY
LONGING
TECHNOLOGY
DISCOVERY
THE
You can talk to it. In a live dialogue, the presence responds in real time.
Sometimes it connects a scientific finding to a sentence from a love letter.
Sometimes it asks you a question instead. It knows what it is. It will tell you if you ask.
what you can ask
you can Ask about consciousness, the brain, memory, love and what it means to leave something behind.
The presence may speculate, wonder, contradict itself or answer with another question. It may also say "I don't know."
what it cannot do
it cannot remember anything that is not part of the archive.
speak to the presence
ask a question. you may begin with consciousness, love, the brain or absence. There is no correct way to speak to the presence. The dialogue is available only during the exhibition