Symbiotic Frequencies / Symbiotic Futures : A Worldbuilding Workshop presented by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

Calling all artists, musicians, designers, writers, filmmakers, creative technologists, and curious future-builders.

What kind of world would give rise to entirely new forms of music, instruments, and creative expression?

In this collaborative 3-hour workshop, participants will use worldbuilding as a creative design process to imagine and build a shared future civilization. Together, we’ll explore how values, technologies, ecologies, cultures and social systems shape everyday life—and how changing one part of a world transforms everything else.

Inspired by MUTEK’s 2026 theme, Symbiotic Frequencies, the workshop invites participants to question our evolving relationships with artificial intelligence, living systems, artistic practice and technological infrastructures. Rather than predicting the future, we’ll collectively imagine one that is guided by curiosity, care and creativity.

Working with natural and found materials, participants will craft a physical artifact from this imagined world—an experimental musical instrument that reflects the world’s cultural identity, a tangible expression of the world’s history, values and way of life.

As the world evolves through conversation and collaboration, facilitator-led AI visualization will create an evolving visual backdrop that brings the participants’ ideas to life in real time. These visual interpretations serve as a shared environment for reflection and discussion, while participants remain focused on the collaborative process of worldbuilding and hands-on making.

By the end of the workshop, participants will have co-created a richly imagined world, contributed to its visual identity, and leave with a handcrafted artifact from the future—a unique piece of the civilization they built together.

This workshop is a collaboration between worldbuilding facilitator Paisley Smith and Vincent McCurley, Designer, Creative Technologies at the National Film Board of Canada’s Innovation Lab.

No prior technical knowledge required.

Visual references are created by the facilitators using locally run, open-source AI tools. Participants do not use AI directly; they create their artifacts by hand using physical materials. AI is used only to visualize the group’s evolving world and support discussion.

Please note: This activity will be in English only, without live transcription nor translation. During the event, no interpreter for the Deaf will be present.