Make Believe
Encounters with Misinformation
State Library Victoria, 2025
Misinformation is everywhere. But Make Believe wasn't interested in the panic or the tech-blaming. Through four case studies drawn from SLV's collection, it explored the human choices, biases, and impulses that make false narratives spread, and asked visitors to consider their own role in it.
Exhibition Microsite · The Saturday Paper · Australian Arts Review
The challenge with a misinformation exhibition is avoiding the obvious. The panic, the tech-blaming, the "can you tell what's real?" fatigue. Make Believe took a different position: misinformation is a deeply human phenomenon, and the exhibition was designed to reflect that. Four case studies drawn from SLV's collection centre human stories, biases, and impulses over algorithms, and ask visitors where they fit in.
The gallery is divided into a central onboarding space and four surrounding rooms. The central space sets the tone: columns wrapped in soft cloud-print wallpaper sit alongside columns painted in a disruptive green screen green, a deliberate visual mistruth built into the architecture. A vertical screen animates library staff reflecting on misinformation, designed to mimic the rhythm of doomscrolling on a phone, interrupted by data visualisations designed by Regine Abos that appear as notifications sharing checked facts about misinformation. At the back of the space, a mirror doubles the apparent size of the room, an architectural fiction hiding in plain sight. The brief for 2D design was developed with UP, 3D design with Peter King, and the spatial concept emerged collaboratively across the team during early concept development.
Make Believe was an opportunity to bring a personal passion for sound and music into an exhibition. The soundscape was composed and produced from scratch using an Arturia Microfreak, field recordings made across Australia and at home, and curated samples, all mixed and performed through Loopy Pro. Birdsong, cicadas, rain, wind, radio crackle, modem tones, static, and white noise morph continuously into one another, nature bleeding into technology and back again. The goal was an ambient, ASMR-quality blend that supports contemplation without overwhelming the space. Slow-shifting LED lighting moves in parallel with the audio.
You can listen to it below:
- Curators: Linda Short, Georgia Goud
- 3D Design: Studio Peter King
- Exhibition Experience Design: Jorge Arreola
- 2D Design: UP
- Exhibition Producer: Nickks Hertzog, Sam McKinnon
- Data Visualisation: Regine Abos
- Exhibitions Manager: Michelle Moo
- Sound Design: Jorge Arreola