Day 2 | Technology: Future Interfaces

Day 2 of MUTEK Forum moves into the architecture of the tools themselves, asking what it means to create, think, and sense alongside intelligent systems. The day examines the interfaces, machines, and infrastructures reshaping creative practice with a critical lens on sustainability, ethics, and the question of intelligence itself. From biosignals and generative AI to Indigenous data sovereignty and hyper-imaging, the sessions trace a field in transformation, probing not just what these tools make possible, but what kinds of relationships, responsibilities, and futures they call into being.

Presented by Epson, Into the Visuals: Where Installation Meets Live Experience brings together visual artist Mika Oki, Moment Factory, and Kamil Nawratil (Volvox Labs) in a series of project presentations moderated by Behnaz Fard (Epson), examining how installation-based approaches influence live performance through expanded storytelling, spatial design, and sensory experience.

A thread running through the day explores living matter, body-nature relationships, and the limits of intelligence itself. In their lecture-performance Cosmosapience: Embodying our Planetary Mind, Southern California-based interdisciplinary artists and researchers Katie Hofstadter and Memo Akten (Superradiance Center for Entangled Intelligence and Planetary Consciousness) weave together ancient biotechnologies, poetry, dance, and ritual, with artificial intelligence and generative systems to interrogate what intelligence really means, and what we risk losing when we look for it in the wrong places. Other presentations include Claire L. Evans and creative collective Elsewhere in India (Murthovic and Thiruda).

A handful of sessions examine the most pressing questions at the intersection of AI, creativity, and the body, tracing how biosignals, machine perception, and generative systems are reshaping artistic practice and raising urgent questions around authorship, agency, and collaboration with non-human intelligences. Jackson 2bears (OTEKH Labs), member of the Abundant Intelligences research team, presents Land-Based AI Ecologies, drawing from Indigenous research-creation projects centered on reciprocity, data sovereignty, and community governance, followed by a conversation with Ceyda Yolgörmez (Abundant Intelligences). Developed in partnership with MozFest, Tuning the Machine: Power, Protocol, and Creative AI is a panel grounded in concrete solutions: licensing, frameworks, open protocols, and transparency tools, examining what fair and just AI actually looks like in practice for music and digital creativity. Featuring Margaret McGuffin (Music Publishers Canada), Sean Power (Musical AI), Jesse McKee (221A), and esteemed music lawyer Elizabeth Moody (Granderson Des Rochers, LLP), who has built her practice around helping clients navigate the AI space and counsels generative voice and audio AI companies, right holders on AI strategies, and organizations including Fairly Trained, Audioshake, and Sureel AI. This panel is moderated by Mozilla Festival Director Zeina Abi Assy.

Presented by the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), a panel on biosignals in digital arts brings together practitioners from neuroscience, immersive technologies, and generative AI to compare methods, ambitions, and limits and to open a public conversation on the ethical questions that come with biometric data in creative contexts. Moderated by Jean-Michaël Celerier (SAT), this panel features Anouk Ethier (Noukii), Karim Jerbi (Université de Montréal), and multidisciplinary artists Jacqueline Beaumont and Erin Gee. A discussion panel on location-based entertainment (LBE), IP, and interdisciplinary creation will feature Jordana Leigh (Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts) and Myriam Achard (PHI).

Moment Factory will present a workshop, Generative AI for 3D Projection Mapping: From Concept to Canvas, a hands-on ComfyUI workshop presented by Alexis Doyon-Lacroix, Vinh Truong, Conner Tozier, and facilitated by Anne-Célia Waddell, moving from an innovation case study rooted in real-world architectural content workflows to a live projection onto a physical maquette.