Welcome to MUTEK Forum
MUTEK Forum, the international marketplace dedicated to visionary ideas in digital creativity
Running in parallel with the Festival and also celebrating a highly symbolic anniversary, the 10th edition of MUTEK Forum will once again gather artists, researchers, technology professionals, digital experts, and innovators from August 20 to 23, 2024.
MUTEK Forum passports are now on sale
Access to the Future Festivals Summit is included in the MUTEK Forum passport, and a pre-registration link will be sent to buyers at the time of the official activity announcement. Daily passes for MUTEK Forum and the Future Festivals Summit will be available for purchase in the spring.
The MUTEK Forum, an international marketplace for visionary ideas in digital creativity, will celebrate its 10th anniversary from August 20th to 23rd, 2024. The iconic Monument-National, Canada’s oldest operational theater built in 1893, will transform into a vibrant hub of creative technology. The four-day event will feature 60 activities with 90 speakers from the fields of music, technology, ecology, media art, gaming, architecture, and design, sharing their insights into inspiring new rituals and thresholds for technological and cultural production.
The program will include performative keynotes, interactive panels, hands-on workshops and labs, captivating masterclasses, and thought-provoking film screenings. This year’s edition will also offer abundant networking opportunities, including the return of the MUTEK Market and organized B2B meetings to foster creative connections and collaborations within the ecosystem.
Located firmly at the cutting edge, this year’s theme, "Utopia or Oblivion: Crafting Human-Centered Technological Futures” calls for a critical reflection of what it means to be human in a hyper-connected world. Named after the celebrated architect, engineer, and futurist Buckminster Fuller's 1969 book "Utopia or Oblivion," the 10th edition of the MUTEK Forum brings together artists, digital experts, researchers, innovators, and technology professionals to collectively explore and materialize the shifting role of technology in current sociocultural transformations.
Rather than reiterating the dominant utopian/dystopian narratives driven by media hype and the big tech marketing machine, the Forum aims to push beyond binary oppositions by inspiring new forms of collective futures thinking and making. Prompted by its utopian theme, the Forum approaches continued explorations of artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR), sustainability, music, and gaming, from a perspective that resists narrative closures and technological stabilization but rather troubles these towards new questions, problems, and future trajectories.
Leading up to the Forum, Future Festivals, a think tank spearheaded by MUTEK, will host its inaugural Future Festivals Summit on Monday, August 19. This summit will gather stakeholders from festivals in Quebec and around the world to collectively envision and innovate the future of digital art gatherings.
MUTEK would like to thank its partners, who play a key role in the maintenance and development of its activities and have provided particular support towards the production of the Forum.
The Government of Québec, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the ministère du Tourisme du Québec, the Secrétariat à la région métropolitaine du gouvernement du Québec, the ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the City of Montréal, FACTOR and Canada’s private radio broadcasters, the Department of Canadian Heritage, Musicaction, Tourisme Montréal, Canada Media Fund (CMF), Xn Québec, Milieux Institute, Applied AI Institute, Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), NAD-UQAC, FEMINAE NOX, Composite, Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Artch, CURRENT, Abundant Intelligences, MusicMotion, Encode Justice Canada, Sporobole, EarthPercent, Dieu du Ciel!, and Station Clip.
