The Dream within Huang Long Cave is an AI-driven interactive narrative that transforms family memory into a speculative encounter with a digital father. The work was created through a psychoanalytic artistic process: I collected family stories, monologues, and archival materials, analyzed the father figure as an “unconscious subject,” and translated these fragments into three life stages of YELL, a virtual character who appears across different versions of Huang Long Cave.

At its center is a dialogue between intimacy and authority. Players explore the cave, speak with YELL, uncover memory fragments, and help him confront unresolved desires, fears, and responsibilities. Rather than using AI to preserve or perfectly replicate a person, the project uses AI as a fragile symbolic mediator—one that exposes the gaps, inconsistencies, and emotional residue within family relationships.

In relation to “Speculative Futures,” the work imagines a future in which AI does not simply replace human memory or simulate immortality, but becomes a poetic interface for negotiating absence, inheritance, and reconciliation. It proposes speculative digital storytelling as a way to rethink family, subjectivity, and emotional connection in technologically mediated worlds.

The work was built in Unreal Engine as an interactive narrative experience for both a video game and a machinima film. YELL, the AI-driven father character, combines a GPT-like large language model through Inworld AI with MetaHuman avatars representing three life stages. Players interact using voice or text input; a game controller and wireless microphone support real-time navigation and dialogue. The film displays a full experience of artists playing the role of son and represents the reconciliation process through gameplay.