Journey (in development)

Journey is a multi-platform installation experience for young audiences and their families. It is both a first person real-time adventure, and an extraordinary fictional world that can be freely explored.

We invite audiences into large scale immersive environments, in which every detail of this imaginary world is carefully curated and constructed. We then use the latest in augmented reality technology to animate these immersive environments – generating characters, plotlines and challenges to overcome.

“Your group arrives at Journey and is introduced to a mysterious device that holds the key to an amazing world. The first puzzle opens a door that is hidden in plain sight. Once through the door, you are instantly immersed in an uncanny world unlike any other. It is a world that is simultaneously ancient past and distant future. Its landscapes are intriguing enough by themselves but literally explode with life and movement when viewed through the accompanying augmented reality app.”

During 2021, the key members of the creative and producing teams were assembled, and set to work on bringing the concept for Journey into reality. The creative team includes Christina Smith, Lachlan Sleight, Paul Lim, Ania Reynolds, Rachel Lee and Christian Leavesley.

The producing team includes Sharon Custers and Gemma Robertson. The Access and Inclusion Officer for the project is Eliza Hull.

The project’s Access and Inclusion Panel was brought in prior to the first creative developments to provide advice on issues relating to access and inclusion for audience and for creative staff.

Across a series of Creative Developments in the second half of 2021, the key members of the team developed the physical spaces and augmented reality content and activities in parallel. Multiple drafts of models and plans were constructed physically in miniature scale, and digitally – both in scale drawings and in ‘full scale’ using Virtual Reality to allow the artists to ‘walk through’ the proposed designs.

Concepts for the activities the audience would engage in using Augmented Reality were analysed and developed, with digital prototypes ready to be developed and tested in the first half of 2022.