Synchresis is a new video installation by Australian artists Trent Crawford and Stanton Cornish-Ward. Exploring emerging developments in brain–computer interfaces (BCI) and ‘thought-to-image’ technology, the work revisits the history of Doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo’s 1990s experiments at Banjawarn Station in Western Australia. Decades later, a solitary teenager travels to this site to understand its history. Using speculative BCI tools, she re-enters, restages, and re-visualises a past she never lived through.

A spiritual successor to their previous films LOCK (2021) and In a World Full of Angels (2022), each work in this series explores the rise of synthetic media and the shifting terrains of belief, identity and ideology in the digital age.

Stanton and Trent are the recipients of the 2026 Goolugatup Digital Art Program commission.

Image courtesy the artists.

Stanton Cornish-Ward (b. 1993, Boorloo/Perth) is an artist and filmmaker. Her work explores how advanced technologies mediate our understanding of history and shape collective memory and identity. Recent exhibitions include the NGV, The Lock-Up, Metro Arts, MARS Gallery, and Discorda Gallery. Her moving-image works have screened at festivals in more than fifteen countries across Australasia, Asia, Europe, & North America. Her work and writing has been published in Art & Australia, Art Asia Pacific, Un-Magazine, Do Not Research and SHOWstudio. She is currently undertaking an MFA in Film at HFBK, Hamburg.

Trent Crawford (b. 1995, Naarm/Melbourne) is an artist whose work explores the impact of image-based technology. He is currently undertaking an MFA in Time-Based Media at the HFBK in Hamburg, Germany. Crawford’s work has been exhibited internationally across institutions and galleries such as the NGV (AU); Human Resources (US); the Museum of Australian Photography (AU), Ace Open (AU), Apertura Institute (PT); Auto Studio (CN); Animal House Fine Arts (AU); and 4649 (JP).

Their previous works, LOCK (2021) and In a World Full of Angels (2023) received Best Experimental Film at the Cologne International Film Festival, and Best Experimental Short at Los Angeles’s Experimental Forum International Film and Video Art Festival.

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