About the Artists

Haru Ji and Graham Wakefield are media artists and researchers collaborating on “Artificial Nature,” an art research project that explores artificial ecosystems as shared realities. Their work aims to shatter the human-centered perspective of the world and deepen our understanding of the complex, intertwined connections in dynamic living systems.

Vladimir Kanic is the creator of living algae sculptures that use spectators’ breath and carbon pollution as food and convert it into oxygen while mitigating the effects of the climate crisis. His worldbuilding practice imagines living algae sculptures as beacons of decarbonized future, where social and climate justice are collaborative public acts as essential as breathing. The artist’s collaboration with living algae, as both an artistic medium and a carbon capture mechanism, embodies a call for a symbiotic future, one that reconsiders our place within the Anthropocene and the potential of interspecies collaboration to enhance our artistic practices and deepen our understanding of humanity. Vladimir is the recipient of Governor General’s and CIBC Fine Arts Awards. His living sculptures have been exhibited throughout Canada and featured on TEDx talk Platform.

Instagram: @VladdKanic (external link, opens in new window) 

Jane Tingley is an artist, curator, and Assistant Professor at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her studio work combines traditional studio practice with new media tools - and spans responsive/interactive installation, performative robotics, and telematically connected distributed sculptures/ installations. Her current work is exploring human-non-human relations and finding ways to remap human-nature alliances. She has participated in exhibitions and festivals in the Americas, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe - including translife - International Triennial of Media Art at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, Gallerie Le Deco in Tokyo (JP), Elektra Festival in Montréal (CA) and the Künstlerhause in Vienna (AT). She received the Kenneth Finkelstein Prize in Sculpture in Manitoba, the first prize in the iNTERFACES – Interactive Art Competition in Porto, Portugal.

Nava Messas Waxman is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher working across visual and time-based media, including performance, moving images, sculpture, and multimedia installations. Her practice delves into themes of diasporic subjectivity, identity, memory, and counter-archiving. Currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Visual Art at York University, Messas Waxman's artistic research examines diasporic gestures, choreographies of intermediation, and the generative potential of new media technologies in performative archiving art practice. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at Scotiabank Nuit Blanche in Toronto (2022), Artworx Toronto (2022), and the Varley Art Gallery of Markham (2019). Recent projects encompass Shared-View (2022), Variations on Broken Lines (2020), Choreographed Marks (2019), and Mobiux (2020–2023). Alongside her independent practice, she engages with collaborative practice and research through experimental artistic forms, improvisational processes, relational aesthetics, and the affective dimension between the virtual and the real.

Toronto-based cinematic storyteller and educator, Wilfred Lee, blends traditional art techniques with AI innovation. With over a decade of experience working with top-tier platforms like Netflix, Apple TV, History Channel, and Discovery, he specializes in generating immersive visual stories. Wilfred's unique approach combines pre-production artistry with post-production AI enhancements, aiming to help businesses, especially in the entertainment industry, integrate AI into their creative workflows. Through his project 'Artist’s Journey,' he empowers others to explore the intersection of creativity and technology, fostering a digital renaissance for artists everywhere.

Evangeline Y Brooks is a postcyber artist working to maintain sustainable, accessible, and DIY artist communities against cultures of immediacy. Her practice engages with digital imagery bridging IRL, passing data back and forth over mediums and celebrating lost information. She is the Programming Manager at InterAccess and co-hosts the A/V showcase ponyHAUS.

Ben McCarthy’s practice plays out a dichotomy between embodied and intellectual pleasure. He is drawn to the allure of sonic texture –  the natural and synthetic sounds that attune and disorganize one’s perception. Through experiments in signal processing and emerging technology he seeks to arrange a sensual present that invites embodied attention. McCarthy works from the intuition that one’s experience of sound and voice is dense with personal and collective association. With sound, text, and documentary he thinks through the social and economic conditions that produce the listening subject. McCarthy is a Dora Award winning composer and his work has been presented across Canada, the US and Europe. He also co-organizes mainstream, a bi-monthly event for experimental music in Toronto.

Instagram: @paleeyesmusic (external link, opens in new window)