True Toxic Love

As a part of the MELT Festival 2018, queer artists describe love through AR.

True Toxic Love curated by Tyronne Curtis brings together a group of young women and tales of queerness through developing technologies as a part of the MELT Festival 2018. This group of interdisciplinary artists including Sophie Reid-Singer, Fiarrah Poole, Gaby Bisaro and Julia Hocken, worked together in a series of workshops to discuss the highs and lows of queer culture and love. Through drawing, these conversations were given tangible form and further reiterated into 3D using VR technology.

These 3D models, woven into structures reminiscent of coiling film cells, represent aspects of each artist’s experiences. Queer culture is often misrepresented, or underexposed within film - leaving stories outside of conventional heteronormativity to become foreign, strange, corrupted or in every definition of the word ‘Queer’. The cells contained within the film strips are glitched, eluding to alternative narratives that fall outside of convention.

Each of the eight models are activated through a free AR application that turn images of Valentine candies found outside of the Powerhouse into bases for these creations to stand. Using the phone’s camera, the user may move around them in real time, seeing a representation of the positive and negative side of love from each artist. The candies themselves allude to these polarising spectrums, diverging from kitsch remarks like ‘soul mates’ to snide comments like ‘you’ll do’.

Through the phone screen - the primary source of contemporary storytelling - True Toxic Love endeavours to present alternative narratives as legitimate ones that can be emphasized with regardless of sexual preference. After all, the floating feeling that true love evokes or the side which rips out your heart and serves it to you on a platter is universal.

The MELT Festival runs from 17th - 27th of May 2018 at the Brisbane Powerhouse.

Curated by Tyronne Curtis

Created by Fiarrah Poole, Gaby Bisaro, Julia Hocken, Sophie Reid-Singer

*This application is optimised for phone devices.

*This application requires camera access to function.

*Access to the trackpads is accessible from within the application's information screen.