Michael Jalaru Torres, a Djugun-Yawuru man with connections to the Gooniyandi/Jabbir Jabbir/Ngarluma peoples, has focused his Intensive Mentorship on ways immersive technology can be used to embed cultural memory in the landscape. Nagula Girradiny/Oceans of the Moon sees the development of location-based AR experiences that give voice to a series of objects, including the Baylor shell and the moon pool, drawing on the Djugun-Yawuru dreaming story of the full moon, Billyur. Nyoongar writer, Timmah Ball, has mentored Michael on narrative design for decolonial perspectives on Latin celestial mythologies.  

About the artists

Michael Jalaru Torres is a Djugun-Yawuru fine art photographer and multidisciplinary designer from Broome, Western Australia.  A self-taught artist, his vivid conceptual portraits and emotionally abstract landscapes draw on Kimberley Country and his connection to his people to digest contemporary and historic indigenous issues. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo shows including Bingaa (BIFB, 2023) and SCAR III (Red Earth Arts Festival, 2021) and was a Telstra NATSIAA finalist in 2023. Founder of Blak Lens, Torres is expanding his practice into installation and motion works, pushing the boundaries of interactive storytelling through a powerful Blak lens into immersive experiences. 

Michael Ovens is a software developer with eight year’s experience building virtual and extended reality experiences with Unity. He has completed and released more than a dozen research, education and simulation products for the Australian tertiary education sector, including complex medical visualisations and interactive neuroanatomy puzzles. Before becoming a software developer, Michael was a historian with multiple peer-reviewed publications. He spent ten years studying the martial arts of medieval and early modern Europe to obtain a PhD from the University of Western Australia. 

Timmah Ball is a writer and zine maker of Ballardong Noongar heritage. In 2022 she published the chapbook Do Planners Dream of Electric Trees?  through Glom Press/Arts House and has featured in a range of anthologies such as This All Come Back Now, Shapeshifting, Words to Sing the World Alive, University of Queensland Press and Best of Australian Poems 2022, Australian Poetry. She has also developed site specific and immersive work including Exploding the Maribyrnong for ACCA’s Who’s Afraid of Public Space (2020) and Disorganising the General Residential Zone for Liquid Architecture (2021). From 2021 to 2023 she was an Arts House Makeshift Publics resident and facilitator which sought to unearth new configurations of the spaces we share. Most recently she worked in curatorial and archival roles at Art Gallery of WA and the State Library of WA. 

Collaborators W. Sze Tsang, Cassandra Tytler and Catherine Gough Brady, led by mentor Tom Muller, are using augmented reality and sound as a narrative vehicle for exploring Hyde Park/Boodjamooling. ARia: Song Unseen investigates the arrival of polyphagous shot-hole borer which is silently killing the introduced tree species, exposing the ongoing and often devastating impacts of colonialism and ecological displacement. 

About the artists

Cassandra Tytler works across video, performance and site-specific practices. Her art and scholarship explore the performance of the audio-visual as a relational politics of resistance to normalising narratives of exclusion. With an unsettling, wry humour and a playful sensibility, she works from feminist, ecosocial and anti-colonialist positions. Originally from Naarm/Melbourne, she moved to Boorloo/Perth in 2023 as a Forrest Creative & Performance Fellow with the Centre for People, Place and Planet, ECU and as a postdoctoral fellow in Wellbeing and Education. Her work has been exhibited, screened and performed nationally and internationally. 

W. Sze Tsang is a researcher, performer and audio-visual artist who explores the intersections of history, place and self through digital technologies. Sze creates work using aspects of place—such as field recordings, maps and information sourced from geospatial and weather datasets—alongside personal reflections as ways of exploring the multi-layered intersections between time, history, ecology and geographical features. Through exposing the multiple layers of narrative that inform place, Sze’s works invite unearthings of the past, meditations on the present and contemplations of the future. 

Catherine Gough-Brady is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and senior lecturer in Screen Production at Edith Cowan University. She has produced and directed six documentary series for ABC TV—including Legal Briefs (2016), Ethics Matters (2017) and The Communicator (2022)—as well as eleven radio features for ABC Radio National. Her art films, which explore our relationship with the non-human, have screened internationally in galleries. Catherine’s research focuses on the relational nature of documentary production and her writing has been published in Media Practice and Education, Screenworks, [in]Transition, Cultural Geographies, and The International Journal of Creative Media Research. She is co-editor of the volume Constructing the Real (2023) and serves as associate editor of Screenworks. Catherine is particularly interested in subverting the humancentric assumptions embedded in film language asking. Her recent work explores the constructive and destructive impacts of mobility—of people, animals and plants—on the environments they move through. 

Kim Smith is a technical artist and software developer based in Boorloo/Perth and the founder and general manager of the games studio, GamesSmiths. Influenced by magic realism and fantasy horror, Kim’s practice extends the everyday into the cyber-verse through the creation of mixed reality experiences. He was the mixed reality developer on BoodjAR for the 10 Nights in Port Festival (2024), collaborating with Voyant AR Director Natalie Marinho and other developers to augment reality with ‘katadjin’ shared by Wadjuk Elders. Kim also served as technical artist on Nazerul Ben-Dzulkefli’s Trans-Oceanic Spectres (2022) during PICA’s Hackathon. His work with Perth-based software company Sentient has been implemented across Western Australia in VR training environments, improving safety and accessibility on mine sites and contributing to the reduction of human error and fatalities. 

Tom Mùller is an established multi-disciplinary artist with an active international practice spanning the realms of site-responsive, temporal and permanent projects. His work has been presented in major exhibitions, including The National, Museum of Contemporary Art; Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art; Art Gallery of South Australia and the upcoming Northern Alps Triennale in Japan. Tom has been the recipient of multiple Australia Council grants and the inaugural winner of the Qantas Contemporary Art Prize, a mid-career fellowship from the Department of Culture and the Arts. In 2009 he was the recipient of ArtSource’s Basel international residency program through the Christoph Merian Stiftung. Tom has been mentored by the Russian American conceptual artist Ilya Kabakov and studied anthroposophy at Emerson College in London. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Art (Sculpture) from Curtin University of Technology, Perth/Boorloo. Tom is the chair of the Freemantle Culture Council and Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Fremantle Biennale. 

Colin Smith and Jen Datu’s joint practice leans into the idiosyncrasies of Filipino culture. Their VR prototype, The Machine Needs a Heart, reimagines the karaoke machine, exploring how spirituality can emerge from digital technologies and how longstanding superstitious beliefs can shape-shift into playful catharsis. Mentor Natalie Marinho has brought her expertise in narrative design and immersive storytelling to guide the project’s story framework, user experience and world building within the VR experience. Assisting in the realisation of the project are Caitlin Lomax in VR design and Delta Kirkham in 3D modelling. 

About the artists

Colin Smith is a queer and neurodivergent Filipinx artist practicing on Whadjuk Noongar boodja (Boorloo/Perth). Their interdisciplinary visual arts practice examines ideas of faith and personal belief systems, where they emerge and how they are expressed under late-capitalism. These ideas are often playfully explored through karaoke performance, digital collage and installations that reimagine social gathering spaces. 

Jensine Datu is an Australian-Filipinx artist living and working in Boorloo/Perth, on Whadjuk Noongar country. They are developing an interdisciplinary practice that is interested in antagonising boundaries of spirituality and violence. Through repetition and subversion, they process the emergence of intuitive self-healing in their work. They graduated in 2019 with a Bachelor of Fine Art and have been involved in exhibitions at Pig Melon (WA) and The Substation (Singapore), as well as residencies with Nod Space, Fremantle Arts Centre, Cool Change Contemporary. 

Caitlin Lomax is an XR producer, software engineer and founder of Intr Studio. She creates cutting-edge XR experiences in games, virtual reality and interactive media. With a software engineering (game development) degree, Caitlin blends technical expertise with creative production, working on titles like Shattered (Meta Quest 2024) and Moving Out 2 (AGDAs 2023 Winner). Caitlin also produced Lustration VR (SXSW 2022) and the award-winning Shell VR Pitstop. A recognised industry leader, Caitlin sits on the Immerse Australia board and WA Games Week steering committee, driving innovation in games, motion capture and real-time experiences. 

Natalie Marinho is an award-winning narrative designer, producer and artist with over fifteen year’s experience in digital media and six years specialising in augmented reality. Passionate about XR and the intersection of people, design and technology, Natalie’s background spans immersive experiences, video games, gamification, telecommunications and international development. As founder and creative director of Voyant Augmented Reality, Natalie designs bespoke mixed reality experiences for creative industries. She chairs Immerse Australia and has served on industry bodies including Screenwest’s Advisory Committee and WA Games Week. Her XR artworks have been exhibited in BLEED, 10 Nights in Port and Fremantle Design Week. She holds a Master in International Relations and Psychology.