Donna Kendrigan

HYPERREALIA

The Hyperrealia collective’s objective is to explore ways to creatively engage with cultural heritage objects, and the creative and critical potential of augmented reality and mixed reality media.

In 2021, Donna Kendrigan, Chris Henschke and John McCormick co-created Hyperrealia, a digital media art collective and platform to collaboratively develop augmented reality (AR) interventions. This was initiated by Donna’s 2018 State Library Victoria Creative Fellowship where she researched the Library’s realia collection, creatively responding to the compelling yet often forgotten objects and their stories. A pilot project was developed, comprising three prototypes, which used 3D scanning and modelling to digitise the realia objects, creating universally accessible expressive and poetic AR experiences. The first iteration was exhibited at Melbourne Design Week 2023

The collective is currently developing a series of experimental artworks with rare and unique items selected from the collection of a major Australian museum. With support from Creative Victoria, the processes and outcomes of this project will manifest questions about our increasingly technologically mediated relationships with each other and the world. Stay tuned about an upcoming exhibition...

About the Artists

Donna’s media works draw upon the archive to explore and reframe historic objects, bringing alternative perspectives and creative agency to the objects. Donna has worked with the Bureau of Meteorology and the State Library Victoria, creating animations and installations that reveal the overlooked histories of Australian pioneering scientists.

Chris has explored human interaction with nature on its largest and smallest scales, through creative media interventions with the material cultures of scientific research. Residencies at organisations such as CERN and the CSIRO have allowed him to explore the agencies of the apparatuses, and experimentally express the stories embedded in the objects of science as they both shape and are shaped by nature.

John is a technology-based artist with a major interest in movement. He was an Australian Antarctic Research Fellow in 2020 supported by the Australian Antarctic Division and Australian Network for Art and Technology. His current artistic work explores human robot interaction mediated by mixed reality environments.