19 February –
29 March 2026

Artist note: spirals + stars

The future operates in spirals, concurrent realities, dreams, places and spaces within a flexible and elegant system. As the spiral unfurls and contracts, the connections between past and present overlap, forming a space for us to dream of the future. Then, the future meets the present to unlock the past—this is the actualisation of deep time. 

boorda yeyi, meaning ‘future now’ in Whadjuk Noongar language, is the name gifted to PICA’s immersive arts program. As the recipients of the program’s inaugural commission, our collective, Friends with Computers, accepted the self-assigned challenge: open a portal 500,000,000 (five hundred million) years in the past when the majority of Earth’s surface was submerged in water. Dreaming in the speculative past is both futurism and nowness—and taps into the intention of boorda yeyi. It is a way to break bounds, to see the world beyond linear time via the use of technology in art. 

Friends with Computers is a recently formed collective with digital artists including myself (April Phillips), Jordan East and Pat Younis. We collaborate in a creative practice that celebrates human creativity, play, experimentation and ethical practices as methodology and process. We name the computer as a tool for art making, with us as creators adopting these tools to realise art. Our work seeks to produce immersive art to spark resonance, connection, introspection, wonder, curiosity and elation in audiences.

Under Waters calls together two opposing yet interconnected ecosystems as sites: the depths of the ocean floor and the heights of the infinite universe. The work’s opening presents deep-water canyons, coral seas and the rich kelp forests of Sea Country as an expansive and interconnected ecosystem. The slow propulsion through waters reveals a rip, opening to a galactic sky-deep sea hybrid space: particles, bioluminescence and blackness—a reminder that deep oceans and sky are connected as one; opposing points of truth that anchor the universe. Additionally, Under Waters operates across a third site: here on Country, on the Noongar Nation, and within PICA during the bunuru season. PICA’s iconic building was built in recent history, one hundred and twenty five+ years ago. Once a school and now an institute of contemporary arts, this building holds layers of memory. On the top level is a door that reads ‘Studio 2’, a room usually closed shut, a private studio for artists in residence. For a time the space has become an overflow extension of the gallery, temporarily co-opted by Friends with Computers, as a presentation space for computer art. The room feels charged, well worn and ready for anything—including the world premiere of our new multimodal realtime digital artwork, our response to the brief: IMMERSIVE

Entering the speculative
past incognito is safer than
being seen…

Immersive art is always a curated experience, in step with design and engineering to envelop audiences physically, virtually and sensorily. When audiences are involved via action and participation we may name it, interactive immersive art. To engage is to accept the invitation to be implicated in the art, a step towards co-creation and play within the simulation. When audiences opt-in for interactivity, in a demarcated play zone, they cross over to be a live performer of Under Waters. The integration of body tracking systems in the work looks for bodies in space, reading dense depth data with an invisible beam of infrared, forming point clouds to estimate the position of each body as a silhouette in real time.

The representation of self on screen in Under Waters offers human bodies a try-on vessel: the shell. Each shell apparates once activated, serving as a symbol of containment and safety as well as being a personalised identifier of self: I am a shell. The realtime data is interpreted as a silhouette within the shell’s interior, lathed in negative as the internal void of each spiral. Real time artist and technical director, Jordan East, tested this idea over months of trials and refinement, working with incremental measurements and compounding scale. From mathematics to mollusc, this containment inhabits the self. There is a playfulness in this state of temporary occupation within the deep-time virtual ocean sphere—albeit safe under the cloak of camouflage. Entering the speculative past incognito is safer than being seen. The shell offers this protection in a fluid form, enabling audiences to exist as an echo in the scene while hiding in plain sight.

The oceanic and galactic biomes that set the stage for Under Waters have been expertly crafted by Pat Younis, who begins the task of world building from an empty scene. The blank slate is a divine and bold move, creating and placing all the big and small elements within a new game engine project. Raising the ground level, carving the land, sprinkling ground clutter, stamping texture and fine tuning shards of light make for rich ecosystems as far as the eye can see.

Younis is in awe of the natural world, referring often to photographic references, gaming intuition and animated cinema. He is committed to layering the worlds of our artworks in keeping with the interconnected web of nature. Once we have a good structure of reference from the natural world, we push into speculation and dreaming—to imagine our own unique versions of plants, creatures, objects and realities. The persistence for immersive art to touch the edges of reality triggers a sense of audience familiarity and belonging within the convention of immersive art. During the development of Under Waters we prioritised real world references by including 3D captures of artefacts formed in local oceans. During the early stages of development, I spent time learning about the abundance of diverse marine life from the Western Australian coastline. Xenophora, also known as carrier shells, are marine snails that cement smaller shells, pebbles, coral and debris as they journey through the water. These gorgeous, charming and unique creatures exhibit their individuality through the thoughtful selection and arrangement of found materials attached to self—an expression of creative camouflage. Stacks of drawers hold tightly nested Xenophora specimens at the WA Museum Boola Bardip. Shells are labeled as originating from the WA coast, Australia and across the Asia pacific. We focused on Xenophora from Murujuga (Dampier Archipelago) and Nyinggulu (Ningaloo Reef) in step with Ngarluma collaborator, Sam Walker. The Molluscs Collection Manager, Corey Whisson facilitated access to view and capture a selection of seven specimens collected between 1960 – 2013. Taking 100+ photos of each shell from all angles formed a 3D photogrammetry digital replica—an echo of Country. The act of preserving a capture is an opportunity for reciprocity between artist and institution, as well as sharing the digital replicas of shells back to the community as an asset for future interpretations and use. The presence of Xenophora in Under Waters merges tangible data and documentation with the spirit and strength of Country. As Sam Walker notes as an opening to the wonders of the world: ngurrawangkagu (Country has spoken).— April Phillips

bubarngka
nhyularha ijgarla
in the water here
where I belong

April Phillips is a Wiradjuri-Scottish woman of the Galari / Kalari peoples, living and working on the Yuin Nation. Her art practice is cemented in futurism and media arts as lead artist / director working across moving images, illustration, 3D assets, research and photogrammetry. Her practice extends to analogue materials and processes, including drawing, printmaking, ceramics and glass. She works within collaborative environments to realise ambitious projects, leading teams to do big things. April employs character design as a narrative tool to explore empathy, fun and form. Her use of vivid colour and unlikely digital processes celebrates the potential of computer art for a new world. In 2025, April was awarded the Creative Australia Emerging and Experimental Arts Fellowship, affirming her position as one of Australia’s most rapidly evolving contemporary media artists. April was awarded the Melbourne International Film Festival Uncle Jack Charles Award, 2024 presented by Kearney Group.

Pat Younis is a Creative Director, real time artist and virtual art director with a practice across film, contemporary art and music. Since 2018, he has specialised in interactive technologies such as Unreal Engine, working within virtual art departments for major film productions while collaborating with artists on immersive installations and musicians on live visual environments. His work translates creative ideas into tangible virtual realities, positioning real-time space as a site for both technical problem-solving and aesthetic innovation. A longstanding passion for video game technologies informs his hybrid practice, which reimagines the tools as platforms for storytelling, experimentation and cross-disciplinary collaboration. 

Jordan East is a media artist working in Sydney, on the lands of the Gadigal and Wangal peoples. His practice explores the relationship between technology and music through immersive video and augmented physical environments. Spanning video, projection, interactive installation and theatre, his projects often evolve in collaboration with improvisational musicians. At the intersection of experimental electronic music and moving image, Jordan’s projects interface performers and audiences with technology through sensors and responsive systems. His process employs procedural animation, photogrammetry, real-time generative methods and emerging digital workflows to blur the boundaries between physical and virtual worlds.

Commissioned as part of boorda yeyi and Boorloo Contemporary | Perth Festival, supported by Wesfarmers Arts. PICA’s boorda yeyi program is made possible with thanks to Founding Patron, The Ian Potter Foundation, Principal Patrons the Feilman Foundation and Lotterywest, and Touring Partner ART ON THE MOVE.