As AI got under my skin
This project grew out of my personal AI angst. About a year ago (2024) I felt the shift when I realized what was happening with technology. It did not feel temporary or passing, but final.
The weight of that realization stayed with me. I am almost fifty, a woman and a mother. I found myself asking how I am supposed to raise my children into an unpredictable world that I cannot fully understand. Suddenly the future that I thought I had been preparing them for no longer existed.
My past career, everything I had worked toward for decades, felt suddenly hollow. Skills and achievements that once gave me purpose seemed worthless compared to the vast transformation ahead.
I felt useless and disoriented, caught between what had been and what I felt was coming.
The fear was not abstract. It stayed with me, heavy and relentless.
My Shift
Eventually I began to redirect the anxiety. I could not stop the change. I could not undo the loss or the void of uncertainty.
Art became my response.
Poems, images and soundscapes are my ways of giving shape to something that cannot be reasoned with, only felt. Creating allowed me to face the chaos without being swallowed by it.
I have made a conscious choice to seek out hope.
In my art I imagine new possibilities rather than only endings. I look for beauty even inside the fracture. This project is a record of my movement from fear toward something lighter, softer, more open.
Still fragile, but at least alive.
This dystopian fantasy is my quiet rebellion.
My refusal to accept the negative mainstream.
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©Samia Oldman
WHAT IS HUSH HALO?
Hush Halo is a dystopian fantasy poetry collection set in a near-future shaped by technology, silence, and optimized perfection. Each poem is paired with its own immersive soundscape. Learn more in Square One.
Context: After the Great Optimization, a privileged group integrated into the system, believing they had now perfected themselves.
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Hush Halo is an indie art project.
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🖤Feeling it? Share your thoughts ↓
“I look for beauty even inside the fracture.” Yes. Yes! What else? I’m a mother as well, also grieving the world I thought I could give my kids that doesn’t exist anymore. But surely this, teaching them to find beauty no matter what, is a skill that will help carry them, whatever the future brings.
Feelin’ it.