Imaginary Friend Archive

The Imaginary Friend Archive is a project by artist Danielle Freakley                                                                                                                    

Technology used in the writing and drawing components on the touchscreens has been implemented by Creative Technologist Chuan Lim.                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Join us on Level 1 to add your Imaginary Friend to the Archive! 

If you unable to join us on site please visit the Imaginary Friend webform to include your friend in the Archive.  

Imaginary Friends can appear anywhere anytime in childhood and adulthood. Socialising and companionship are basic human needs we are able to meet even when alone. The Imaginary Friend Archive team are interested in collecting imaginary friends to add to the archive for future investigations and artwork.  

Visit Level 1 to add your friend to the archive by following the prompts on the touchscreens and an AI image of your friend will be generated. Your imaginary friend depiction will then be added to the archive of Western Australian Imaginary Friends, showing insight into the magnitude of these special unseen relationships in our community.  

A small selection of the archive will be displayed at the WA Museum Boola Bardip in the coming months as a part of the Illuminate exhibition. A more comprehensive display - a digital imaginary friend world - will be exhibited at a later date. Some of the imaginary friends in the digital world will be based on material in the archive. All contributions will remain anonymous and any names mentioned in your description will be changed in the archive to protect the privacy of participants and others. 

Freakley's investigations into imaginary friends have been going for many years. In 2016 the first iteration of the project was a part of the Liverpool Biennale were participants were invited to write about their imaginary friends and some went on to collaborating with performers. The performers then brought versions of the imaginary friends to life to interact with audiences privately. In 2020 Freakley worked with a group of participants to record their imaginary friends experiences directly after they had happened through experience sampling app on their phones. This stage of the project works to bring visual depictions of imaginary friends to life and add them to the growing archive. 

Danielle Freakley is a Perth based Seychellois-Australian artist working in performance, social practice, interactive systems and sculpture. Her works speak about social relationships, exposing lurking histories, private subtexts, and slide into re-authorship. Freakley has been selected to exhibit as an artist in the 2024 Venice Biennale in Arsenale, she has previously exhibited at the Tate – Liverpool Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art – Sydney, Performa – Performance Biennial of New York, and in various other international biennials, triennials, national galleries, state galleries, contemporary art spaces, kitchens, snake temples, theme parks and beaches. Freakley has been researching and exploring imaginary friendships in her work or several years in various iterations 

Chuan Lim is a creative technologist working in XR (extended reality) and Ai systems. Chuan has developed projects with META for meta headsets, technological projects at MONA Museum Tasmania, Melbourne Museum, MCA Theta Labs, and many others to deliver challenging technological projects.