Collisions: Lynette Wallworth

A stunning VR experience, acclaimed filmmaker and artist Lynette Wallworth’s Collisions invites audiences on a journey to the land of indigenous elder, Nyarri Nyarri Morgan and the Martu tribe in the remote Western Australian desert.

In a thought-provoking, immersive virtual reality experience, Nyarri shares his story of the dramatic collision between his traditional world view and his experience of nuclear testing in the South Australian desert.

Nyarri Nyarri Morgan's first contact with western culture came when he witnessed an atomic explosion in the South Australian desert. Half a century later, another technology affords him the chance to show you the world that was ruptured that day.

At the invitation of Nyarri and the Martu tribe, artist Lynette Wallworth has sculpted an immersive virtual reality experience that places you at its story's epicentre. From songs of the oldest surviving culture on the planet to drones soaring above the red desert, from projectors powered by car batteries to bombs that poison the land, this is a world that finds itself – again – teetering on a precipice of technological change that questions how we will steward it into the future.

Production Details
Director: Lynette Wallworth
Producer: Nicole Newnham
Featuring: Nyarri Nyarri Morgan and his story
Narration: Lynette Wallworth and Curtis Taylor

Collisions was developed as a result of the inaugural Sundance New Frontier-Jaunt VR Residency.

Lynette Wallworth is an acclaimed Australian artist and director whose immersive installations and films reflect connections between people and the natural world, while also exploring fragile human states of grace. Her works use mesmeric environments, interactive technologies and narrative long-form to engage with viewers. Often engaged with emerging technologies, Wallworth has frequently exhibited her work at Sundance Film Festival, New Frontiers. There she has shown her interactive installation Evolution of Fearlessness, a moving portrait of 11 women who lived beyond the state of fear and the full dome feature Coral: Rekindling Venus, which has an accompanying augmented reality poster collection.

Wallworth’s first documentary film Tender won the AACTA (Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards) for best televised documentary and was nominated for a Grierson Award in the UK. Wallworth’s work has shown at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the American Museum of Natural History, New York, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, the Smithsonian, Royal Observatory Greenwich for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad; Auckland Triennial; Adelaide Biennial; Brighton Festival and the Vienna Festival among many others as well as various film festivals including the Sundance Film Festival, London Film Festival, Glasgow Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Adelaide Film Festival, and the Margaret Mead Film Festival.