The Hologram Fortune Teller

For LionTree's 2022 retreat we built The Midnight Oil Club, a retro-futuristic arcade spanning more than 100 years of entertainment history. It mixed curated vintage machines with bespoke modern builds, unified under a Blade Runner-inspired aesthetic. An arcade like that needed a crown jewel, and the Fortune Teller was it.

A fortune teller booth that was actually alive: a live performer captured volumetrically and presented as a real-time holographic video display, reading fortunes and talking back to guests.

I led the creative and technical build with my team. Volumetric capture has run through my whole career, and this piece pushed that work into live performance.

A live volumetric camera solution captured the performer's likeness in real time and overlaid it onto a Unity-based interactive framework. The performer could trigger animations, effects, and personalized interactions, and watched a live feed of the arcade floor to observe and speak directly with guests approaching the booth. At the push of a button, the Fortune Teller printed AI-generated fortunes — a tangible keepsake from the encounter.

It was a standout favorite of the event and a genuine technical milestone: a working real-time holographic video display performing for a live audience. For me it marked an important chapter in the evolution of the volumetric technologies that have defined my career.