Behind the scenes: the making of Furby Chorus and FRIENDs

There's a particular kind of strange that comes with installing an exhibition in the middle of the night. The floors are empty, the lights are too bright, and you're carefully arranging cute domestic robots in a shopping centre while the rest of Melbourne sleeps.

That's how Furby Chorus and FRIENDs came to life.

The NCM team, alongside the brilliant fabricators at Quirk Projects, spent the night at Emporium Melbourne getting everything just right — building shelving, positioning robots, hooking up wires, and bringing the whole installation to life in the quiet hours before opening.

Where the idea came from

Furby Chorus and FRIENDs grew directly out of NCM's recent exhibition FRIEND, and the question it kept raising: what is the relationship between humans and machines? What happens when technology becomes a companion, not just a function?

Furbies are a surprisingly rich place to start asking that question. From a 1999 spy scandal that got them banned on commercial flights, to the passionate collector communities who hack and customise them, they've always occupied a strange and tender space in our cultural imagination. What if the robots already gathering dust at the back of your cupboard could teach us something about empathy, care, and connection? What if they offered a different vision of technology, not the dystopian robots of science fiction, but something warmer and more human?

Exhibition designer Ryohei Murakami of studioBOWL, whose thoughtful, unhurried approach shaped the world of FRIEND, brought that same sensibility to the Emporium space, creating an environment where the robots feel at rest, waiting to be woken.

How it was built

The technical heart of the installation was built by NCM Studio, NCM's in-house creative tech workshop. Cameron Holman's activation brings the robots to life every 15 minutes. Furbies spin in a pirouette and bat their very long (and often wonky) lashes, Qoobos and Petite Qoobos wag their tails and Mirumi glances shyly away as people peer through the glass at them. The 2D design is a remix on the original FRIEND graphics by Indego Design, with typesetting by Steph Yap, with the print and install completed by Decently Exposed – so it was definitely a group effort!

The robots themselves have their own remarkable stories. The Furbies on display were crowdsourced from collectors near and far, with a special shout out to our friend Lord Freddy Furby, who generously loaned part of their collection for FRIEND as well as the Furby Chorus and FRIENDs installation. Nao, the humanoid research robot, was generously loaned to us by muru-D. And Qoobo and Mirumi, Yukai Engineering's quietly joyful companion robots, were donated to the NCM collection by Shunsuke Aoki, Yukai Engineering's co-founder and the founding CTO of teamLab, now the world's most-visited museum. That Aoki made the trip to bring these robots personally to NCM feels fitting. Yukai Engineering was built on the belief that robots should enrich everyday life, not extract attention from it. These little robots carry that philosophy with them.

Go and meet them

Furby Chorus and FRIENDs is free and on display at Emporium Melbourne until 21 June as part of RISING festival. Every 15 minutes, these robots come to life. It's worth stopping for.

Furby Chorus and FRIENDs was created by National Communication Museum (NCM) in collaboration with Ryohei Murakami of studioBOWL. Presented by Emporium Melbourne and RISING.

Exhibition Design: Ryohei Murakami of studioBOWL

Curatorial: Jemimah Widdicombe

Activation: NCM Studio

2D Design: Indego Design, with typesetting by Steph Yap

Fabrication: Quirk Projects

Print & Install: Decently Exposed

With thanks to Lord Freddy Furby for the generous loan of their Furby collection, to Shunsuke Aoki of Yukai Engineering for the generous donation of Qoobo and Mirumi to the NCM collection, and to muru-D for the loan of Nao.