Integrating Augmented Reality into Contemporary Artworks

Josh Muir’s “What’s On Your Mind?”, Simon Denny’s “MINE”

I led the creative direction and experience design for the augmented-reality components of two very distinct contemporary artists’ exhibitions: Josh Muir’s “What’s On Your Mind?” at Bendigo Art Gallery; and Simon Denny’s “MINE” at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona).

Working with First Nations Curator and Southern Kaantju, Umpila and Kuuku Ya'u woman Shonae Hobson and Gunditjmara, Yorta Yorta and Barkindji artist Josh Muir, I produced the interactive layer for a series of eight works with a small team of creative technologists (Dan Parkinson and Mitch McCaffrey) together with artist, animator and longtime collaborator of Josh’s, Isobel Knowles.

Josh was very clear about what he wanted from us as his team. He wanted us to be ourselves and to approach the collaboration as equals with our own diverse experiences to draw upon to strengthen the artwork. Despite coming to the work as a Producer for Art Processors, I was able to extend my contribution into sound design and music production, providing the score to Josh’s intimate narration and psychedelic animations.

He wanted us to be ourselves and to approach the collaboration as equals with our own diverse experiences to draw upon to strengthen the artwork.
The opportunity to collaborate as both an artist and producer presented itself again when developing the digital interactive layer for New-Zealand-born artist Simon Denny’s major exhibition for Mona, entitled “MINE”. This ambitious and large scale exhibition tackled the complex subject matter of extraction and mining both of rare earth minerals and of human labour. One of the feature components of the works was a manifestation of the “canary in the coalmine” depicted by an augmented-reality bird, the threatened species “king island brown thornbill” - which could be seen when using Mona’s flagship “The O” app with a newly reworked UX and UI created for MINE. My favourite rabbit hole for this project involved a collaboration with scientists and a mission to record and document the bird's call, something that hadn’t adequately been captured in available archives.

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Sui Zhen

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