Meet the Mentors of MUTEK AI Ecologies Lab

The MUTEK AI Ecologies Lab is an interdisciplinary residency fostering innovative and sustainable approaches to AI in the cultural sector. The lab provides a platform for artists and researchers to examine the environmental impact of AI practices while advancing sustainable approaches to AI usage in the cultural sector. It reimagines a world where AI-driven innovation in art and culture does not come at the expense of the environment, but coexist in harmony. The project is led by MUTEK, in collaboration with the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), Applied AI Institute, Milieux Institute and Abundant Intelligences.

The AI Ecologies Lab Mentors play a vital role in supporting participants, offering guidance, expertise, and feedback throughout the early design phase of their projects. We selected a diverse group of mentors from across Canada and beyond, with experience in areas ranging from climate justice to open-source AI tools, ensuring a broad range of perspectives and skill sets. The mentors will be actively involved during the build phase of the AI Ecologies Lab taking place at Concordia (June 2nd-3rd) and the SAT (June 4th to June 6th), where they will provide hands-on support for the prototyping and development process. Get to know them and their areas of focus below.

Mikellena Nettos

Title: environmental advocate, facilitator, and community organizer

Affiliations: Climate Reality Leader, Facilitator with changemakerXchange/the facilitators, Climate Wayfinding Facilitator

Field of expertise/focus area: Climate Justice & Environmental Education

Location: Tiohtià:ke/Montréal

Links: https://mikellenanettos.com/

Mikellena is an environmental advocate and community organizer focused on climate, health, and community engagement. She holds a Master’s in Sustainability Science and Society and a Bachelor of Science in Medical Sciences, employing a multidisciplinary approach to global challenges. Her research on environmental racism in Ontario used GIS mapping to highlight disparities faced by visible minority communities. As the Program & Communication Officer for a scholarship foundation, she enhances alumni engagement and connects scholars with opportunities. Previously, she managed climate action coalitions and represented Canada at an international workshop with The Climate Reality Project Canada. Outside her advocacy work, Mikellena enjoys exploring Montréal’s parks and working on grassroots climate initiatives.

Favourite book: All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (Editor), Katharine K. Wilkinson (Editor)

Marie-Ève Levasseur

Title: Independent Artist

Field of expertise: open-source 3D, XR, self-hosted and open-source AI tools, sculpture, installation.

Location: Tiohtià:ke/Montréal

Links: https://marieevelevasseur.com/

Marie-Ève Levasseur is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Her work unfolds through various media such as video, installation, sculpture, digital printing, 3D animation and virtual and augmented reality. She is interested in the notion of process, hybridized becoming, metamorphosis and potential collaboration with the non-human. Her research draws on a feminist posthumanism and attempts to identify the place of the material and emotional body in our interpersonal communications via screens. Levasseur holds an MA and a Meisterschüler from the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, Germany. Her installations have been exhibited internationally, notably in Berlin, Paris, Zurich and Hong Kong.

Favourite book: The Xenogenesis Trilogy, by Octavia E. Butler, or Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy, or Semiosis, by Sue Burke (it is really too hard to choose)

Fenwick McKelvey

Title: Associate Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University and co-director of Applied AI Institute

Affiliations: Concordia University, Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology, Applied AI Institute, Algorithmic Media Observatory, Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, Groupe de recherche en communication politique, The Canadian Disinformation Network, and the Montreal Society and Artificial Intelligence Collective.

Field of expertise: Algorithmic Media, Critical Approaches to Social Media and Big Data, Internet Policy, Digital Political Communication, Network Neutrality.

Location: Tiohtià:ke/Montréal

Links: https://www.fenwickmckelvey.com/

Fenwick McKelvey is an Associate Professor in Information and Communication Technology Policy in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University. He is co-director of the Applied AI Institute and leads Machine Agencies at the Milieux Institute. He studies digital politics and policy. He is the author of Internet Daemons: Digital Communications Possessed (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) winner of the 2019 Gertrude J. Robinson Book Award. He is co-author of The Permanent Campaign: New Media, New Politics (Peter Lang, 2012) with Greg Elmer and Ganaele Langlois.

Favourite book: The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

Migueltzinta Solis

Title: Dr. Migueltzinta

Affiliations: Adjunct Professor, Piiksinaasin/Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lethbridge/Iniskim. Interim Director, Centre for Indigenous Arts Research & Technology

House Mother, House of -tzintlán Collaborator, Abundant Intelligences

Field of expertise: Immersions, divination technologies, queer materialities, technodecolonial methodologies.

Location: Lethbridge, Alberta

Links: https://migueltzinta.com/

Migueltzinta Solís is a trans Chicanx interdisciplinary artist, writer, scholar, filmmaker, educator, Tarot practitioner, and consultant. He was raised in California and Oaxaca by parents involved in the Chicano/a Movement during the 80s and 90s. He works at a unique intersection of creative arts practice, critical studies, and research creation. Migueltzinta writes across multiple genres and forms, working towards counter-institutional poetics for knowledge mobilization. Theme parks, amateur porn, Indigenous futurities, parallel realities, divination technologies, colonial imaginaries, queer materialities, and (un)belonging have been recurring themes. Materially, he has worked in performance, video, photography, leather, textile, installation, and painting. Migueltzinta holds an MFA in Art and a PhD in Cultural, Social and Political Thought from the University of Lethbridge/Iniskim in Treaty 7, traditional Blackfoot territory.

Favourite book: Oval by Elvia Wilk

Jean-Michaël Celerier

Title: Chief Technology Officer

Affiliations: Society for Arts and Technology

Field of expertise: Creating free and open-source tools for media arts

Location: Tiohtià:ke/Montréal

Links: https://jcelerier.name/

Jean-Michaël Celerier, born in France in 1992, is interested in art, code, computer music and interactive show control. He studied software engineering, computer science & multimedia technologies at Bordeaux, and obtained his doctorate on the topic of authoring temporal media in 2018. He develops and maintains a range of free & open-source software used for creative coding, digital and intermedia art, which he leverages in various installations and works. He is currently leading the technological development at the Société des Arts Technologiques in Montréal, QC. Most of his work has been focused on the ossia platform for which he is the lead developer. He enjoys organizing events centered on programming and media art and teaches all sorts of creative coding languages (PureData, Processing, OpenFrameworks, etc) to computer science, sound and graphics design students.

Favourite book: Corps et Biens by Robert Desnos

Daniel Perlin

Title: Director of Make_Good_Design and Global Lead of Sustainable Experience Design at Accenture Song

Affiliations: New Inc, the New Museum Incubator

Fields of expertise: Experience Design, Art, Sustainability

Location: Los Angeles

Links: https://danielperlin.net/

Daniel believes in listening closely as a strategy for design. He is the founder of Make_Good_Design, an experience design studio dedicated to bettering lives and the planet, and is the Global Lead of Experience Design at Accenture Song's Sustainability studio. As a designer focused on sustainability and climate justice, he has produced a wide range of works, from screen-based experiences to objects to installations and spaces. Recent collaborations include work with the UN, CalRecycle, Sonos, Spotify, Vans, Google, IBM, Under Armour, Vito Acconci, Maya Lin, Errol Morris, Kelly Reichardt, the Cooper Hewitt Museum and Domus magazine.

In addition to client based work, Daniel has created experiences at The Storefront for Art and Architecture, MoMA New York, The Whitney Biennial of Art, the Venice and Seoul Biennials of Architecture and other galleries and institutions. His collaborations have won awards such as Cannes Cyber Grand Prix, Webbys, FWAs and National Design Awards. Daniel is a graduate of Brown University's Modern Culture and Media department, as well as NYU’s ITP and the Whitney Independent Study Program and has taught at NYU's ITP and IDM Programs, RISD's department of Graphic Design, SVA's Products of Design and Columbia University's GSAPP. He likes to hang out with his family, ride his bicycle and has been seen DJing recently with plants.

Favorite book: Noise by Jacques Attali

Tegan Maharaj

Title: Assistant Professor

Affiliations: Mila core member, HEC, SRI fellow

Fields of expertise: Deep learning, generalization, responsible AI, climate AI, AI safety, ecology, risk assessment

Location: Tiohtià:ke/Montréal

Links: http://www.teganmaharaj.com/

After 4 years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, Tegan has recently returned to Montréal as a core professor at Mila, where they run the ERRATA* lab (Ecological Risk & Responsible AI; Theory and Practice) *learning from mistakes. A member of the Abundant Intelligences project, co-founding member of Climate Change AI, managing editor at JMLR, fellow of Schwartz Reisman centre for Society and Technology and alum fellow of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, their research helps build the growing science of responsible AI while applying AI to ecological problems including biodiversity, climate change, epidemiology, safety, risk and impact assessments, and anticolonial AI. Tegan is increasingly interested in fundamentally different ways of creating, communicating about, and understanding AI, including novel theoretical approaches, research-creation, and participatory integration of traditional ecological knowledge in modelling.

Favourite book: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

We would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Montreal for their generous support. This project is funded as part of the Cultural Development Agreement of Montreal established between the City of Montreal and the Government of Quebec.

As we move toward the in-person hackathon prototyping sprint in Montreal from June 2-6, 2025, and the AI Ecologies Lab project presentations in demo form at the MUTEK Forum from August 20-22, 2025, follow us on social media to stay up to date with the participants’ progress.