Collisions is a virtual reality journey into the land of indigenous elder Nyarri Nyarri Morgan and the Martu tribe in the remote Western Australian desert.
Nyarri’s first contact with Western culture came in the 1950’s via a dramatic collision between his traditional world view and the cutting edge of Western science and technology. 65 years later, filmmaker Lynette Wallworth carried cutting edge video technology into the desert so Nyarri Nyarri Morgan could share his story. Amid the endless horizon of the remote Western Australian desert, we are given a rare insight into the hidden history of Britain’s nuclear testing by stepping into Morgan’s shoes.
Lynette Wallworth recounts the creative process behind bringing Nyarri Nyarri Morgan's story to life through VR:
I first heard of Nyarri’s story four years ago on a hunting trip with the Martu women painters in the Western Desert. Hearing that I had been to Maralinga where Britain tested atomic bombs in the 1950’s, Nyarri’s wife Nola turned to me with what felt like an instruction…'You have to talk to Nyarri.'
A year later I did just that and I heard a short powerful parable that Nyarri had waited almost his entire life to share. So this work was born, as a thought or an imagining. I hadn’t yet experienced Virtual Reality and I was waiting to decide the form that would best suit this work. I experienced my first VR film, almost a year ago to today, and when I saw it I knew how to make Nyarri’s story come alive. I have worked in immersive environments for over 20 years and I felt like VR was the technology I had been waiting for. At the same time, Sundance New Frontiers Institute co-directors Shari Frilot and Kamal Sinclair had exactly the same thought. A partnership with Jaunt VR has made Collisions a reality but only with the inexhaustible, unflappable energy of producer Nicole Newnham.
