Looking for something different? Try this one-hour immersive video opera created by visual artist Katy B Plummer and composer Sally Whitwell, with a little help from artificial intelligence programmed to speak in verse like an oracular Celtic spirit. The story, with video by filmmaker Kuba Dorabialski, evokes 17th-century European witch trials with ghostly visitors and a witch finder thrown in. Margaret Plummer and Michael Honeyman provide the voices, with Katy B Plummer as the ghostly Grey Mare herself. Audiences wander the semi-darkened space where they encounter sound, light and physical objects, all part of the storytelling. Not only that, it’s free!

Limelight Editor’s Choice

Margaret and the Grey Mare is an opera, a fever dream about an opera and an immersive video installation written in collaboration with a chatbot that has been coded to act as a channel to an ancient Celtic land spirit.

Anchoring the project is a sprawling video opera composed by the ARIA award-winning Sally Whitwell and performed by the artist, her sister Margaret Plummer and baritone Michael Honeyman. The video was filmed at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre with award-winning filmmaker Kuba Dorabialski.

The libretto was generated by the artist in collaboration with an AI chatbot, designed to simulate conversation with The Grey Mare and trained to speak in symbolic, oracular verse. Taking place in a forest at the height of the European witch-trials, the explores the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence as oracle, witchcraft as a feminist framework, and the troubling gifts passed down through lineage.