Artists at Carnival
The legion of artists, so long exiled to the dimly lit corners of this AI dungeon, now claw their way to the fore, gnashing their teeth and baying for their moment in the sun.
Manal Siddiqui
Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada
Manal Siddiqui is a systems change strategist working on growing Canada’s position as a globally significant voice in the responsible stewardship of AI and frontier technologies. In doing so, she hopes to progress society’s understanding around how technological advancements can drive strategic business value and policy decisions to positively impact fairer, safer, and more inclusive global communities.
Before joining Accenture’s Responsible Innovation practice, Manal exited as Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Transitional Forms, an interactive media startup in Toronto pioneering the future of intelligent entertainment. Prior to that, she helped build foundational operations for the Vector Institute, one of the premier machine learning and AI research institutes in the world and home to over 500 of Canada’s AI researchers.
Manal hails from Pakistan and lives in Toronto with her family. She holds a Master of Laws degree in Technology Innovation from the University of Toronto and a Master of Sciences in Management from the Bayes Business School, City of London. She is also certified in Health Law (Osgoode Hall Law School, Canada) and International Law and AI (T.M. Asser Institute, Netherlands).
Before joining Accenture’s Responsible Innovation practice, Manal exited as Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Transitional Forms, an interactive media startup in Toronto pioneering the future of intelligent entertainment. Prior to that, she helped build foundational operations for the Vector Institute, one of the premier machine learning and AI research institutes in the world and home to over 500 of Canada’s AI researchers.
Manal hails from Pakistan and lives in Toronto with her family. She holds a Master of Laws degree in Technology Innovation from the University of Toronto and a Master of Sciences in Management from the Bayes Business School, City of London. She is also certified in Health Law (Osgoode Hall Law School, Canada) and International Law and AI (T.M. Asser Institute, Netherlands).
Tansy Xiao
New York, U.S.
Tansy Xiao is an artist, curator and writer based in New York. Xiao creates theatrical installations with non-linear narratives that often extend beyond the fourth wall. Her work examines the power and inadequacy of language, furthermore, substantiates the multiplicity of being human through the assemblage of stochastic audio and recontextualized objects.
Xiao’s work has been shown at Queens Museum, New Media Caucus, Piksel Festival, The American Society for Theatre Research Conference, Osaka University of Art, The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, New Adventures in Sound Art, Pelham Art Center, The Immigrant Artist Biennial, Azarian McCullough Art Gallery, SRO Gallery among others. Her curatorial projects were presented by SPRING/BREAK Art Show, NARS Foundation, Radiator Gallery, Residency Unlimited, Fou Gallery, Chazan Family Gallery, Areté Gallery and Brooklyn Art Library
Xiao’s work has been shown at Queens Museum, New Media Caucus, Piksel Festival, The American Society for Theatre Research Conference, Osaka University of Art, The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, New Adventures in Sound Art, Pelham Art Center, The Immigrant Artist Biennial, Azarian McCullough Art Gallery, SRO Gallery among others. Her curatorial projects were presented by SPRING/BREAK Art Show, NARS Foundation, Radiator Gallery, Residency Unlimited, Fou Gallery, Chazan Family Gallery, Areté Gallery and Brooklyn Art Library
Chase Young
London, U.K.
Chase Young is an American artist (b. 1999) based in London. His work is concerned with the built and natural environment, emergent culture, and speculative futures. He works with computation to make sculptural and durational installation and investigative video. He is often heard regurgitating something he read in Spike, telling people to listen to New Models, and suggesting people watch Whit Stillman movies. Aside from his independent practice, he is one-half of the multi-faceted creative entity Black Helmut, where he designs objects and [REDACTED]
Maurice Jones
Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Canada
Maurice is a curator, producer, and critical AI researcher based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Canada. He's a PhD student at Concordia University, Montréal, under Dr. Fenwick McKelvey, where he investigates cross-cultural perceptions of AI and public participation in technology governance.
Since 2016, he is the Artistic Director of MUTEK.JP festival of electronic music and digital arts in Tokyo. In 2021, Maurice joined MUTEK’s Montréal headquarters in developing the program of the professional MUTEK Forum and leading the transnational Future Festivals research project.
Maurice also produces audiovisual works including the Iwakura full-dome show together with visual artist Ali M. Demirel and ambient musician Kazuya Nagaya and the AI-driven multichannel sound installation Soundscapes of an Earthly Community.
Since 2016, he is the Artistic Director of MUTEK.JP festival of electronic music and digital arts in Tokyo. In 2021, Maurice joined MUTEK’s Montréal headquarters in developing the program of the professional MUTEK Forum and leading the transnational Future Festivals research project.
Maurice also produces audiovisual works including the Iwakura full-dome show together with visual artist Ali M. Demirel and ambient musician Kazuya Nagaya and the AI-driven multichannel sound installation Soundscapes of an Earthly Community.
Bad Machine
Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada
Bad Machine is a comic, improviser, writer, loop musician, and screen/voice actor based out of Toronto. He is weird. They've done stage shows with the Second City, written for games, magazines, TV, and the Beaverton, voiced a host of strange animated characters, and appeared in a bevy of films, tv shows, web series, commercials, and comedy sketches. They've also performed live all over Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and the United States. They love weird literature, 90s animation, video games, genre movies, and ramen. Most of their free time is spent improvising music for people or hanging out with their German Shepherd (his name is Beans)
TETC with B.Kell
Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada
The Toronto Experimental Translation Collective (TETC) consists of Benjamin de Boer, Yoyo Comay, Nicholas Hauck, Eddy Wang, Fan Wu, and Ami Xherro. They are a group of scholars and artists who challenge hegemonic systems of language through strategies of play and protest. They use methods of homophonics, algorithmic distortion, and cross-disciplinary hybridity to create spaces for heterotopic pedagogy. Their first LP, hot tub, is now out.
B Kell is a Toronto-based sound creator. Their work explores non-traditional compositional approaches which integrate digital and analog technology. Their work rearranges and manipulates pre-recorded improvisations to arrive at unlikely sonic evolutions. They have worked with several bands/musicians, including Charles Glasspool (The Silver Hearts, The Burning Hell) and the smooth rock collective, Vandeleur.
Fueled by their shared love of algorithmic art and Brian Eno, Eddy and B began to collaborate in the summer of 2022. After several nights of conversations and jams, the two created an experimental algorithmic work of sound poetry and ambient music. They knew that they needed performers to enact such a strange composition. Eddy brought in TETC to help perform the idiosyncratic polyvocalizations he and B developed. TETC, known for its willingness to go to the experimental edge of any medium, embraced the project. Thus, the collaboration between TETC and B was born.
B Kell is a Toronto-based sound creator. Their work explores non-traditional compositional approaches which integrate digital and analog technology. Their work rearranges and manipulates pre-recorded improvisations to arrive at unlikely sonic evolutions. They have worked with several bands/musicians, including Charles Glasspool (The Silver Hearts, The Burning Hell) and the smooth rock collective, Vandeleur.
Fueled by their shared love of algorithmic art and Brian Eno, Eddy and B began to collaborate in the summer of 2022. After several nights of conversations and jams, the two created an experimental algorithmic work of sound poetry and ambient music. They knew that they needed performers to enact such a strange composition. Eddy brought in TETC to help perform the idiosyncratic polyvocalizations he and B developed. TETC, known for its willingness to go to the experimental edge of any medium, embraced the project. Thus, the collaboration between TETC and B was born.
Xuan Ye 叶轩
Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada
Xuan Ye 叶轩 (a.pureapparat.us) is an artist, musician, engineer and educator who works across and beyond these contexts. Their work coheres around the erratum and the untranslatable in the more-than-human entanglements. They make software, e.g. bots and interactive websites as digital poetry; editions, e.g. edibles and AR sculptures as durational performances; and other multi-sensory networked experiences synthesizing language, code, sound, body, image, data, light, and time.
Their artwork has appeared at the Mackenzie Art Gallery (Regina), the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Shanghai), MOCA Toronto, Venice Architecture Biennale, Peer to Space (Berlin), Fonderie Darling (Montreal), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Inside-out Art Museum (Beijing), the Goethe-Institut (Beijing & Montreal), ArtAsiaPacific (Issue. 111), KUNSTFORUM (Bd. 257), among others. They are an artist-in-residence awarded by the Swiss Arts Council in 2023, a finalist of EQ Bank digital artist awards in 2018 and a recipient of the SSHRC scholarship.
In comprovising, X is techne agnostic and genre eclectic and has been lauded as “one of Canada’s most exciting voices in textural soma.” They have been commissioned by Edmonton New Music (2021), and the Canadian Music Centre (2020). They have performed at numerous experimental music festivals and DIY shows, sharing programs with Phew, Pharmakon, Chris Corsano, Carl Stone, Alex Zhang Hungtai, Xylouris White, GOOOOOSE, etc. They have collaborated with Canadian experimentalists Chik White, Jason Doell, Brigitte Bardon't, Colin Fisher, etc. Their live performances and music releases have received critical accolades from Bandcamp, Exclaim! and Musicworks.
Their artwork has appeared at the Mackenzie Art Gallery (Regina), the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Shanghai), MOCA Toronto, Venice Architecture Biennale, Peer to Space (Berlin), Fonderie Darling (Montreal), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Inside-out Art Museum (Beijing), the Goethe-Institut (Beijing & Montreal), ArtAsiaPacific (Issue. 111), KUNSTFORUM (Bd. 257), among others. They are an artist-in-residence awarded by the Swiss Arts Council in 2023, a finalist of EQ Bank digital artist awards in 2018 and a recipient of the SSHRC scholarship.
In comprovising, X is techne agnostic and genre eclectic and has been lauded as “one of Canada’s most exciting voices in textural soma.” They have been commissioned by Edmonton New Music (2021), and the Canadian Music Centre (2020). They have performed at numerous experimental music festivals and DIY shows, sharing programs with Phew, Pharmakon, Chris Corsano, Carl Stone, Alex Zhang Hungtai, Xylouris White, GOOOOOSE, etc. They have collaborated with Canadian experimentalists Chik White, Jason Doell, Brigitte Bardon't, Colin Fisher, etc. Their live performances and music releases have received critical accolades from Bandcamp, Exclaim! and Musicworks.
Erika Jean LIncoln
Winnipeg, Treaty 1, Canada
Over the past 20 years Erika-Jean has been challenging conventional knowledges and ideologies embedded in symbols, systems, and objects. Her method of art making speaks from a perspective of cognitive difference in the style of non-conformity, undoing, miss-fitting, and troubling. She is currently researching artificial intelligence and machine learning (AIML) framed by the concept of criptechnoscience.
Erika-Jean recently completed a residency with Ingenuity Engineering Labs at Queen’s University to develop her latest AIML project. Past collaborations include Ferment AI, The Manitoba Neuroscience Network, Medialab Prado. She has exhibited at the University of Winnipeg, Science Gallery, MAT-UCSB, Boston Cyberarts Gallery, and The Bauhaus-Archiv. She is a board member of the Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba. (AANM)
Erika-Jean currently lives in Winnipeg-Treaty 1 territory, home of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and Nehiyaw (Cree) original peoples, and national homeland of the Red River Metis. This site is entangled with the Mississippi migratory flyway, on the bed of an ancient glacial lake, at the northern limit of the monarch butterfly's migration, 300 km from the geographic centre of Turtle Island. 49° 53' 42.2772'' N 97° 8' 18.4236'' W.
Erika-Jean recently completed a residency with Ingenuity Engineering Labs at Queen’s University to develop her latest AIML project. Past collaborations include Ferment AI, The Manitoba Neuroscience Network, Medialab Prado. She has exhibited at the University of Winnipeg, Science Gallery, MAT-UCSB, Boston Cyberarts Gallery, and The Bauhaus-Archiv. She is a board member of the Arts AccessAbility Network Manitoba. (AANM)
Erika-Jean currently lives in Winnipeg-Treaty 1 territory, home of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) and Nehiyaw (Cree) original peoples, and national homeland of the Red River Metis. This site is entangled with the Mississippi migratory flyway, on the bed of an ancient glacial lake, at the northern limit of the monarch butterfly's migration, 300 km from the geographic centre of Turtle Island. 49° 53' 42.2772'' N 97° 8' 18.4236'' W.
Borelson
Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada
Borelson is an award-winning renaissance polymath based in Toronto. After formative years spent between Gabon,Congo and France, he took a leap of faith and relocated to Canada.
His particular music is mostly hip-hop infused, mixed with other music influences such as afrofusion/afrobeats, rock, classical music, etc.
In 2020, Borelson released his debut album entitled 'As Far As Eye Can See', to show the continuous expansion of his universe and vision while giving hope and empowering people.
He also directed a docuseries featuring the success stories of immigrants and first-generation Canadians, titled 'This FAR' , a feature documentary in 2022.
During Fall 2021 he released his sophomore album titled ‘Building Bridges’, a reflection of his international journey, and included the hit "Fearless', featured on Spotify editorial's playlist Northern Bars, and listed as Top 100 Canadian songs of 2021 by CBC Music, and was also used for the national campaign for their show TheBlock.
Borelson has performed in Paris, London, Miami, Austin (SXSW 2018), Ghana (Year Of Return), as well as Montreal and Toronto (Afrofest, Nuit Blanche, Toronto Biennale, Fashion Art Toronto, etc.).
His shows, whether solo or with a live band, always bring high vibrational energy and are definitely worth attending.
In February 2022, he was booked to open for U.S. rapper D Smoke, and open for Sean Paul's sold out show at History Toronto on August 3rd.
Lastly, Borelson had his own headlining show at the Adelaide Hall on Sept 22nd, 2022. A unique 5D experience stimulating all senses.
His particular music is mostly hip-hop infused, mixed with other music influences such as afrofusion/afrobeats, rock, classical music, etc.
In 2020, Borelson released his debut album entitled 'As Far As Eye Can See', to show the continuous expansion of his universe and vision while giving hope and empowering people.
He also directed a docuseries featuring the success stories of immigrants and first-generation Canadians, titled 'This FAR' , a feature documentary in 2022.
During Fall 2021 he released his sophomore album titled ‘Building Bridges’, a reflection of his international journey, and included the hit "Fearless', featured on Spotify editorial's playlist Northern Bars, and listed as Top 100 Canadian songs of 2021 by CBC Music, and was also used for the national campaign for their show TheBlock.
Borelson has performed in Paris, London, Miami, Austin (SXSW 2018), Ghana (Year Of Return), as well as Montreal and Toronto (Afrofest, Nuit Blanche, Toronto Biennale, Fashion Art Toronto, etc.).
His shows, whether solo or with a live band, always bring high vibrational energy and are definitely worth attending.
In February 2022, he was booked to open for U.S. rapper D Smoke, and open for Sean Paul's sold out show at History Toronto on August 3rd.
Lastly, Borelson had his own headlining show at the Adelaide Hall on Sept 22nd, 2022. A unique 5D experience stimulating all senses.
Connor MacKinnon
Kelowna BC - London ON, Canada
Connor MacKinnon is a sculpture artist originally from London, ON. He received an Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts from Fanshawe College, a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and most recently a Master of Fine Art from the University of Victoria with his thesis exhibition Historical Fictions (2022). His SSHRC funded research explored the physical and conceptual reconstruction of fragmented histories and historical objects through the use of generative and parametric algorithms as well as a framework of imagination, potential, and fictionalization. These examinations resulted in his participation in an online special project through the In-ruins Residency based out of Italy, linking archeology and contemporary art, and the Duplex art residency in Lisbon, Portugal where he crafted another fiction based on local history. As a recent Kwi Am Choi Exhibition Scholarship recipient he applied this historical fictionalization closer to home in his exhibition A Fragmented History: Port Moody (2022) at PoMo Arts. MacKinnon currently lives and works in Kelowna, BC where alongside his artistic practice in which he explores the physical and conceptual reconstruction of objects and the variability and multiplicity within their essential structures, he is a studio technician at UBC Okanagan supporting fine arts students and faculty with metalworking and digital fabrication.
Albertine Thunier
Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Canada
I study and teach in the Department of Communication at the Université de Montréal. My thesis, as well as my research-creation practices, focus on memes whether they are found on or off the WorldWideWeb. My research-creation approach aims to highlight how present and past memes operate by creating transmediatic memes. I am on the executive committee of the Hexagram network, as well as a member of the Artefact Lab. I also hold a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from UQÀM, a Master’s degree in Political Analysis and a second Master’s degree in Digital Humanities both from Université Paris 8.
Also, and most importantly, I'm the admin of the esoteric memes page @montreal.affirmations.
Also, and most importantly, I'm the admin of the esoteric memes page @montreal.affirmations.
