Ancestors takes shape as an immersive room installation which begins by generating your Digital Double. The Doubles become autonomous actors forming a virtual community together. Some linger as quiet observers, while others actively reach out in an attempt to connect with another. Intimate stories of relationships unfold from their random encounters, sometimes producing Descendants: digital natives generated from the parents. The Doubles and their Descendants generate unique and surprising family lineages, connecting the audience for a moment as virtual kin.

Doubles are ancient companions of human beings in folklore and fairytales, lending imagery to a universal human problem: our relationship to ourselves. Ancestors focuses on updating and re-invigorating the cultural legacy of the Double with digital technologies in an attempt to transcend the 20th century concept of the individual. The evolving Digital Double framework, a narrative simulation, makes everyone in the audience a main character through their own digital counterpart. The Hero´s journey is transformed into a collective trip, also taking into account those left outside of the monomyth.

Our face is a social mask hiding and protecting emotions, but is also a node in a unique chronological trajectory. The face headlines an ancient genealogy—the people and beings who find their contemporary shape in us. Our face is a gift from them. Ancestors invites us to step beyond the regime of possessive individualism and share our features with others.

Artist: Hanna Haaslahti
Generative Face Capture: Tyler Henry
Animation: Mike Robbins/High Road Stories
Technical lead: Alap Parikh 
Creative technologist: Charu Tak/Studio Typo
Portal design: Panu Heikkilä
Actors: Marc Gassot & Laura Rämä
Sound: Pelle Venetjoki
Producer: Tuuli Penttinen-Lampisuo
Production: Fantomatico

With support from: AVEK; Arts Promotion Centre Finland; Creative Media, European Union; Film Tampere; Niilo Helander Foundation; Tampere Art Museum; YLE

Hanna Haaslahti (FI) is a Finnish media artist based in Helsinki, known for interactive, immersive works blending human presence with digital technology. Her installations invite people to participate in social simulations, using tools like real-time face generation, virtual doubles, and projections to explore identity, relationships, and crowd behavior. Her most recent work has focused on exploring narrative possibilities of Digital Doubles. 

How would it feel to witness those who have come after you, as an ancestor? What does it mean to share physical space with strangers, only to see your digital self sharing that space and exhibiting behaviors different than your own? Hanna Haaslahti’s Ancestors prompts us to grapple with these questions through her hyper-immersive work. Visitors position themselves in front of a camera, which renders them inside a digital environment alongside rendered counterparts. The work thus reimagines the animation one embodies in real life, pushing it beyond individual control and compelling viewers to decide how the shift feels. Ultimately, Haaslahti invites us to step beyond the regime of possessive individualism and learn to share our presence with others.