VCA DESIGN & PRODUCTION
GRADUATE SHOWCASE
GRADUATE SHOWCASE
Digital Doppelgänger, Cathryn Kusuma, 2025
Mixed media installation comprising digital prints, archival imagery, and found items
Digital Doppelgänger reconstructs the aftermath of a speculative airline disappearance through fragments of fabricated evidence. Inspired by the aesthetics of analogue investigation boards, the work merges AI-generated identities, human traces, and missing person posters into a single constructed archive. It examines how technology reshapes collective memory – where truth becomes a shared illusion of data and image.
Created by Cathryn Kusuma
Supervised by Brie Trenerry and Narelle Desmond
With participation from peers of the Victorian College of the Arts (2025): Amber, Cleo, Conan, Sheryn, Iliyan, Jacqueline, Jess, Josh, Karen, Medina, Naomi, Osha, Pav, Sienna, and Winnie.
Digital Doppelgänger – Missing Posters, 2025
Ecostar Digital print on A4 paper
Part of the Digital Doppelgänger installation, the missing posters reimagine the aesthetics of public disappearance through AI-generated identities. Each face is a composite of multiple individuals, embodying the instability of truth and the tension between visibility and erasure. Their weathered surfaces and uniform design evoke both familiarity and unease – reminders of how easily identity can be constructed, circulated and forgotten.
Digital Doppelgänger – Passport and Boarding Pass, 2025
Silk HD digital prints on paper
The speculative passport and boarding pass from Flight Komet 16 extend the fiction of Digital Doppelgänger into tactile form. Printed with the precision of real travel documents, these artefacts evoke bureaucratic legitimacy while concealing fabricated truths.
Digital Doppelgänger – Passport Interior and Boarding Pass, 2025
Silk HD digital prints on paper
The open passport and Komet 16 boarding pass form a fabricated record of travel within the Digital Doppelgänger narrative. Designed with the anti-surveillance typeface ZXX, the document resists machine readability – turning typography itself into an act of quiet rebellion. Within the illusion of official precision, the smallest anomaly – a close-eyed portrait – disrupts the fiction of certainty, revealing how data and identity are never entirely aligned.
Digital Doppelgänger – Passport Interior, 2025
Matte laminated cover with silk internals, 12.5 x 8.8 cm saddle stitch and trim
Digital Doppelgänger – Boarding Passes, 2025
Silk HD digital print, 20.3 x 7.6 cm
Digital Doppelgänger – Archival Prints, 2025
Lustre photo paper prints, 15 x 10 cm and 18 x 13 cm
These prints originate from real-world photographs, later processed through AI to align with the project's narrative and atmosphere. Each image carries a different essence of reality reinterpreted – a blend of the authentic and artificial, existing somewhere between memory and invention.
Cathryn Kusuma is a Melbourne-based graphic designer and creative thinker whose practice is driven by conceptual depth and curiosity. Her work is grounded in the belief that meaningful design begins with strong ideas – systems built from thought as much as form. Her process begins with noticing. Treating observation itself as a form of collaboration. Throughout her time at VCA, she has developed an approach that balances intuition with intention, transforming creative energy into design that feels both reflective and impactful. Her journey as a designer has begun to define not just a practice, but a lifestyle – a way of seeing and communicating meaning through design.