Photography by Toby Shaw (with support from Lee Powell)

Hair and Make up by Emma Rekker

Now, if I wrote down RX to the good people of Hastings, they might very well think-ah yes, the fishing boats, and their Rye registration. But what if we flipped those letters around and it was XR? The Winter edition’s seasonal cover was by tech-artist Ornagh Lynch, convert and champion of all things Extended Reality.

For those of us that aren’t digital natives (having been born since 1989 and coming of age with the Internet), there is an ever-growing number of acronyms and developments within technology that can leave your head spinning. As a basic rule, XR encompasses virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR).

We’ll return to those terms later but let’s go back to when I spoke to Ornagh about her art. It was the day of Donald Trump’s reelection, and it made for quite a formidable backdrop. An enemy of women’s rights, the LGBTQ+ community, artistic and media freedom, minorities, and seemingly the rest of the world, the forty-seventh President of America stands for very little that Ornagh holds dear and celebrates.

Born in Dublin, and retaining her Irish accent, Ornagh moved to the UK aged six and spent time in London, back to Dublin, then Manchester, and Ireland again. Various moves meant she had attended six different schools by age eighteen. Throughout her childhood, she loved drama and dancing, taking up ballet, contemporary dance and even hip-hop. As a kid, she was always making magical dens and creating clubs, encouraging people to follow her and get together.

Not short of self-awareness, she’s quick to reference how this has affected her behaviour,personal values and artistic practice. She has always warmed to gangs and groups and enjoys being part of a tribe. She embraces change and finds excitement and possibility instead of trepidation and limitations.

By 2009 she was back in the UK putting on nights in Camden at venues like The Black Cat, customising vintage clothing bought in Paris and selling it to scenesters in the capital. Working with indie rock bands and on fashion shoots there was a constant crossover of creativity but it waned over time. Through frustrations and sheer will of personality, she was inspired to form her own collective, The Nave. The group used video art to address political themes and question the role of the media and its treatment of women and the LGBTQ+ community.

Fast forward to 2020 and the start of the global pandemic, Ornagh moved to Hastings. Her family had often visited over the years and it seemed a natural, healing place to settle after a break-up. But what is it that keeps her here? Traits that many of us will recognise and appreciate – freedom of self-expression, a supportive artistic community, a welcoming and genuine town, full of do-it-yourself culture and a devil may care attitude. “It had everything that I wanted. I can do my pilates on the beach in the morning, I can go for a run with my dog, and then go swimming, meditate… and the fact it’s such an artist town. There was this guy walking up George Street with a briefcase, in a nappy with a pink collar and matching pink socks. What the fuck is this place? I love it!” What started as a six-week sojourn has become a home for life.

“It’s here and it’s not going anywhere. Tech is inevitable, you have to embrace it. Saying you don’t like AI is like saying you don’t like the Internet.”

All the same, building a new life from scratch is no small task. It takes more than a kitchen cupboard full of mismatched plates all picked up in the Old Town. A self-defined pack animal, it was initially lonely navigating Hastings and St Leonards in lockdown, where access to people and entertainment was scarce. It was partly through these unsupportive conditions that Ornagh’s interest and exploration of online tech began to deepen and she discovered the Metaverse.

It’s probably a good time to cover off some of these terms. The Metaverse is defined as an online virtual world where real people represented by avatars can interact in a three-dimensional fashion. Virtual reality (VR) is being in a virtual world, usually while wearing a headset that feeds visuals and audio. Augmented reality (AR) is where the real world is amplified with something virtual – it could be bunny ears on a friend through an app or information displayed on the screen concerning what is being viewed. Mixed reality (MR) is a mixture of these and other tech developments, not least scanning and volumetric capture – the recording of 3D objects for use in virtual worlds and mo-cap, short for motion capture,which helps convert real movement into digital animation (think of the actor Andy Serkis and his roles in Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes and King Kong). Oh, and all of this is XR! Phew! Keeping up at the back there?

To paraphrase the artist, Folkstone Creative Quarter was where she met the future. She tried VR painting, explored multiple different worlds, tried her hand at many of the above terms and found a source of endless exploration. She knew, “This is my thing.” Keen to state that VR is the platform, the space or exhibition, not the art itself, it was with all this in the background that she returned to dancing. And in much of her work, you will find Ornagh visually there – not just to avoid paying and directing an actor but to be there as herself, to get involved, roll up her sleeves and remain central to her practice as a political point.

Freedom is the clarion call of her work. Throughout her life, opportunities and restrictions have been the source of pleasure and pain. Working in virtual worlds has allowed her a baggage-free platform to express herself and live by her values. She will not be silenced. Of course, collaboration is possible but so much can be achieved alone, just with the (often free) software. Freedom of expression, of appearance, of sexuality and feelings are limitless in her realm – in one recent piece Rabbits Got Your Tongue, 2024, she rides on a giant mouthless tongue wearing a bikini and Stetson, in front of a cascading waterfall while Beefcake dancing rabbit headed characters dance to the beat.

“I’m an immersive, world-builder, experimental, techy, kinda girl,” she tells me. But she’s much more than that too. She’s been into drag since her time in London and brings hyperfeminine, male and ‘ugly’ characters into performance, challenging gender, the patriarchy, the impossible beauty standards of the day, and the West’s fixation with ageing.

There’s more than one string to her bow. Teddy Tinker’s emporium on London Road has been a huge resource for costumes and looks, and some of her imagery has been seen through her VJing (video jockey, I know, enough with the acronyms!) at local electronic music night High Tides.

From her studio in St Leonards, half draped with an appropriately named Dublin Green screen, let’s go back a few weeks to Hastings Bonfire Night. What was the effigy this year? A cute robot reading AI for Dummies. How does artificial intelligence fit into her work? “It’s here and it’s not going anywhere. Tech is inevitable, you have to embrace it. Saying you don’t like AI is like saying you don’t like the Internet.” Thinking of it as a language or relationship, Ornagh says it speeds up things in her life, not just her work.

Natural Reader narrates texts to her. Another programme helps with developing story Bibles and concepts. She uses Midjourney for image creation, ChatGPT for social media posts, and Radical Motion AI for animation and mo-cap. Referencing the great developments in health through AI use, Ornagh’s a tech optimist and sees a future dystopia as unlikely. What about big tech and censorship? “An artist will always have a way to shine through and do their style.”

It isn’t that big tech is not a threat, but like the Internet, TV and radio before it, these communicative inventions have been harnessed for good and bad, and Ornagh takes the high road. She has given a talk on her work and experience with XR at OBX Connects, in the Observer Building and worked with students at Dv8 Sussex in Bexhill. This is very much part of her wider involvement both in the wider community and virtual worlds. She would love to take VR into a retirement home and introduce some of these wonders to an older generation.

On her website (ornagh.com) and Instagram handle (@ornaghworld) there’s a hashtag – embrace the glitch. It acts as a rallying cry to just get on with it. Don’t worry about the finesse and finish, make something, create your own worlds – and it’s this punk attitude that brings us full circle, back to the studio. Lola, her French Bulldog, is growling over a toy. I’m in her seat, and she wants it back. Ornagh, artist and digital world-builder, tells me simply, “It’s Lola’s world and we’re just living in it.”

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