Helena Dong graduated from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2018 where she studied fashion design. Since then, Helena now bases herself in New York where she is advancing within the technical realms of fashion as well as creating augmented reality Instagram filters as a side project. Helena’s idea to immerse her skills into the world of augmented reality especially made for Instagram, came about when she first moved to New York. She was looking to hone her practice without having to hire a studio or use lots of materials, so this exclusively digital art form seemed perfect. Helena now shares her time between working for the high end clothing brand ‘Dion Lee’ and creating her own masterpieces in the form of filters.

You are currently based in New York, but how has your career within the arts unfolded so far?

I consider the assimilation of diverse disciplines to be necessary in the process of artistic expansion and reforming perspectives. I was trained in fashion design, so despite having developed a keen interest in performance, interactive and process art in my early projects, I was still determined to build a career within the fashion industry as a designer. Part of that determination was a result of having mentors who have successfully maintained their positions in the field, part of it also came from my own credulity. Since I was fifteen, I have held multiple jobs working for designers and clothing stores in Melbourne and London, yet this preliminary insight into the industry did not shield me from the initial blow of moving to New York, and realising that the pursuit of a linear career trajectory was no longer creatively sustainable, at least not for what I wanted to do. Last year, after joining the design team at Dion Lee, I felt the need to start deciphering my own intentions and devising projects that adapt to these evolving conditions and reflect the resources around me. This revelation has been pivotal in solidifying my gaze on the digital domain, and it prompted me to engage in collaborations with a distinct focus on communication through audience interaction and augmented reality.

How did your degree in fashion design at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology help direct and aid your chosen practices?

Upon reflection, my four years at RMIT was a period of creative indulgence, where I was encouraged to explore fashion through an interdisciplinary lens. I was fortunate to be in a position where I could design not only clothes, but the strategies in which these clothes are communicated and experienced beyond materialistic goals. Yet admittedly, fashion design is a very specific subject, and it harbours this unspoken obligation amongst students and graduates for them to persist at this speed and to stay in the industry, which sometimes can be tremendously toxic. For me, it was and still is important to negate these concerns with one of the things that I learned through my university projects — the optimism that I can partake in anything and everything as long as I have the desire to do so. So then, why wouldn’t I expand my practice? The other benefit of having this educational background, particularly in the context of collaborations in the fashion industry, is that it facilitates a shared understanding between the designers and me. I would not have arrived at this realisation without former training in this discipline.

Your graduate project ‘Scissors, Calculator and a Beige Coat’ lays bare events and self-reflections from your childhood - can you explain and expand on this concept?

‘Scissors, Calculator and a Beige Coat’ has three parts — a collection of clothing, an interactive narrative and an online performance. I was first enthralled by this idea of inciting audience participation with fashion in a way beyond the act of dressing. In fashion, observers tend to privilege visual cues, and personally at that time, I was less interested in the optical outcomes and more fascinated by the process of imparting an encompassing agenda. That year, I was writing my thesis on relational experiences through fashion presentations, which investigated the correlations between the different roles within a performance context, namely the designer, the viewer, the performer and the garment. This research directed me to Nicholas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics and Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory, which since have had significant impact on my practice. The element of consequential participation and the notion that a work is completed through the involvement of the viewer were ideas that I resonated with, but the challenge was to construct it in a way that evoked meaningful engagement, and not just another idealistic proposition. I wanted to come up with a line of communication that was directly interwoven into the garments within my collection, and would subject the audience to a series of decision making. That’s exactly what happened, I ended up designing an ensemble with a beige trench coat in correspondence with the story, which had the capacity to shift in appearance through diverging combinations of choreography based on each of the player’s decisions. In terms of disclosing personal events through this narrative, I saw it as a process of psychoanalysing my own choices, as it signalled a tone of resourcefulness and transformation which have appeared throughout my work over the years. I also understood these self-reflections as a way for me to come to terms with my history, and in turn to establish a point of connection with the audience through a part of me that is not always perceivable. For the record, ‘Scissors, Calculator and a Beige Coat’ was named after a dream I had when I was sixteen: the world was about the end, yet I grabbed two objects before leaving the house — a pair of scissors and a calculator.

You have collaborated with a series of various creatives - how important is collaboration to your individual practice?

Creative industries are built on collective efforts, it is less about how important the gesture of collaboration is, but more so how inadequate it would be to attempt to forge a practice out of only myself. Regardless of the differences in contribution, every player is mandatory, from the person who conceives the idea to the person who views the outcome. Early in my career, these collaborations were photoshoots and films, then when I realised the instrumentality of multi-directional participation in my practice, it became imperative that the audience is invited to adopt the role of a collaborator within a preordained framework. Naturally, this doesn’t pertain to all scenarios, but I do believe in the importance of establishing a structure for participation, not to guide every action but offer enough of a guide so that the audience is able to partake in the narrative and still feel a sense of agency. I find Micol Assael’s Chizhevsky Lesson a fascinating example of audience collaboration within a site specific installation that posed invisible danger. Maurizio Bolognini’s call for collective intelligence through separate devices in relation to public generative art is also worth nothing.
On the contrary, when it comes to collaborating with designers and creators, my priority shifts from such structure to an open conversation that facilitates the exchange of ideas, where I also am reminded to momentarily step away from personal constraints and to garner a new frame of reference. I find it exceptionally motivating.

What initiated your work that uses augmented reality?

I would say that these reasons were circumstantial. After moving to New York last August, I was acclimatising to the city, I wanted to design but I wasn’t inclined to invest in a studio space or to start accumulating materials. It took a few brainstorming sessions of “what would be highly optical, instantaneously gratifying, with the fluidity to reach varying audience and no up-front costs?” That was the time when SparkAR was surging in popularity, so I thought I’d try my hand at augmented reality filters. Initially, I only envisioned a collection of virtual eyewear, involving surreal and kinetic forms that I otherwise would not have been able to produce in real life. As a matter of fact, AR felt far removed from my comfort zone at the time, as I was not in possession of any 3D design or animation skills. Two weeks after toying with the software, I launched my first AR filter, it was a pair tinted glasses. After creating a few more virtual renders, and becoming aware of groundbreaking VR art projects such as Char Davis’ Osmose (which was introduced in the 90s), I certainly felt impelled to progress my skills. So, I watched online tutorials and began to deviate from eyewear design into an array of 3D animated objects — jewellery, head props, make-up, home decor and oracle.

Recently you have been creating Instagram face filters - how do you go about concepting and designing these digital art pieces?

Different filters command different conceptions. But generally, like any other artistic projects, I form an idea, and try to refine it either digitally or on paper before going ahead with building the assets (Blender, Photoshop, Illustrator) and ascribing the interactive triggers (SparkAR). One of my most recognised filters — Fortune Cookie — was conceptualised on a two-hour train ride upstate with a friend, three days before the new year. That was also the time when every second story on Instagram featured an image sequence filter (i.e.. What Pokemon Are You?). I had an actual fortune cookie note on the back of my phone and I started imagining using the same mechanism to activate not random images, but random fortune readings. I ended up creating the filter on December 31st, and it became live on New Year’s day.

Whilst the standard practice sees a filter taking days or weeks (or months) to refine, it could absolutely be created on an impulse. With frequent software updates, many filters are actually designed in reflection of the most innovative ways to utilise these new functions. However, I should also point out the foremost woe of digital creators: users tend to prefer simple effects that either beautify or convey humour, as a result, filters that are visually or technically impressive are not always the most sharable. So user preferences is something that I must take into consideration.

In what direction do you see your work developing in the future?

My work carries this continuous theme of adaptability, which applies to both personal conditions and to technological accessibility. I can see this aptly translating into a process of conceiving methods of design communication through a multiplicity of media, and through partnership with creative individuals or organisations. Starting with revisiting my original intent of creating virtual eyewear and expanding this into a larger, perhaps on-going collection, I am also investigating how I could potentially traverse into the sphere of video games in a considered manner. Having said this, I intend to border my practice on the fashion industry and continue to probe this amalgamated space of clothing and digital encounters.