Overview
Between personal life, careers and major life decisions on the horizon, there's no shortage of things to stress about in our futures. Yet most of us won't look to our local fortune teller to get some insight on what the years ahead might hold. But would we turn to artificial intelligence? Playing on this idea is a new interactive installation by renowned Australian art and technology studio ENESS, which has created HP*ATM — Human Psyche AI Teller Machine.
Inviting visitors to receive a personalised psychological reading, this friendly-looking machine will happily tell you who you are using a combination of facial recognition, palm reading and button selections, spitting out a pointed horoscope that riffs on old-world fortune telling, but in the form of a future-forward AI-powered system. However, don't think this inflatable installation is simply about regulating artificial intelligence hype.
With conversations around AI seemingly impossible to ignore if you have an internet connection, HP*ATM has been created to question our growing comfort with providing so-called intelligent systems with even our most intimate personal information. Taking inspiration from the 1998 classic film, Big — where the all-knowing animatronic fortune teller Zoltar Speaks grants a child's wish to become an adult — ENESS brings this idea into 2026 with HP*ATM.
Presented as part of Automation Bias, the latest group show at FutureJuice during Illuminate Adelaide, stepping up to the machine gives participants the chance to consent to having their fortune read. Then, if you decide to go ahead, the machine reads your face and palm for psychological clues, then analyses a series of button presses. Yet the entire interaction remains ambiguous. While playful and pleasant, the opaque assessment has a sinister undertone.
This idea is also captured in the machine's physical design, with the installation produced using AI relying on past ENESS artworks and a detailed prompt, resulting in its soft, inflatable body. At the same time, the studio has drawn on classic Japanese iconography and Heisei nostalgia, adding details like a vintage telephone, retro buttons and sounds, and a traditional Noren curtain, usually seen outside restaurants, that signals HP*ATM is open for business.
According to ENESS, including these throwback details alongside HP*ATM's interactive possibilities serves as "a nod to the attrition of technology," speaking to "the very human tendency to be obsessed by current technologies without anticipating their obsolescence."
HP*ATM by ENESS is on display for Illuminate Adelaide as part of the free Automation Bias exhibition, running until Sunday, August 30 at FutureJuice, 258 Flinders Street. Head to the website for more information.
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Images: Sam Roberts.