Gemma Crowe (XR Program Director) is a new media artist and recent graduate of Emily Carr University of Art + Design’s full-residency MFA program. Crowe holds a bachelor’s degree in contemporary dance and has ten years of professional experience in filmmaking and video art, which influences how she approaches an audience of viewers and listeners. Her thesis research is concerned with the illusory potential of sound and the sensory apprehension of movement. Crowe received Canada Council and British Columbia Arts Council funding for her research into spatial sound and the bodily experience as well as a research award through Emily Carr University. Crowe completed a residency at Lobe Studio working with world-class 4DSOUND spatial sound software and delivered a presentation on embodied sonic design at the 2022 International Seminar on Sonic Design. Crowe will continue her research in embodiment, virtual theory, and audience perception in her role as New Works XR Program Director.

Sarah Hin Ching U 余衍晴 (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian emerging dancer, choreographer, and creator in live, digital and multimedia performances. My main intention is to create performance experiences that are engaging, reflective and community-oriented. I gravitate towards stories in human desire, identity, relationship; and is grounded in experiences that have touched me deeply and personally. Collaboration is essential to my practice, and I prioritize hosting and creating space to share knowledge and skills in between, and outside of art forms.

My work has been presented by National Arts Centre, Capsule: Video series (Ottawa), The Dance Centre (Vancouver), NewWorks (Vancouver), DanceWorks (Toronto), Impulse Theatre (Victoria, BC), Free Flow Dance Theatre (Saskatoon), SpringWorks (Ontario) among others.  In 2022, I received the Professional Performing Artist Award from BC Arts Council and is 1 of the 3 annual Artist-In-Residence at ArtStarts Gallery. Other notable performing credits include Dancing on the Edge Festival 2019 with Danse Carpe Diem/Emmanuel Jouthe (Montreal); Nuit Blanche 2021 with Jackie Latendresse (Saskatoon); and Dancing on the Edge Festival 2022 with Kylah Powell (Vancouver). I hold a BFA in dance and kinesiology from Simon Fraser University.

James Albers is an emerging artist, curator, writer, organizer, performer, and drag artist based on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) territories. They recently graduated from the department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver with a double major in Visual Arts and Art History. During their final year, they were the Assistant Director of the Hatch Art Gallery, UBC’s only student run art space. Conceptually, their practice often adopts collaborative and community oriented approaches as they see this as a productive way to subvert singular and limited perspectives within artistic spaces and worlds. James is interested in exploring the queer potentials of revisionist histories and chooses to believe in the magic of fiction. Recently, James has been thinking through the truth that a perfect lie may hold.

Ian Garrett is a designer, producer, educator, and researcher in the field of sustainability in arts and culture.  He is the director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts and Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University, where he is Graduate Program Director for Theatre and Performance Studies. He is also producer for Toasterlab, a mixed reality performance collective. He maintains a design practice focused on ecology, accessible technologies and scenography.
Recent work includes I am a Child of… with Keaja d’Dance at the Harbourfront Centre, the exhibition design for World Stage Design 2022 in collaboration with Patrick Rizzotti., and the most recent versions of the locative immersive media projects Parkway Forest Time Machine and STEPS’ From Weeds We Grow both in Toronto Parks. Other XR projects include multiple works with DLT Experience, including: Spectators Odyssey at TO Live, The Right Way at the Venice Biennale and The Stranger 2.0 at the Columbus Centre Toronto. HIs documentary Groundworks which broadcast nationally on PBS in the US through October and November 2022, looking at four of the contributing artists to the locative and site-specific performance of the same name presented on Alcatraz on San Francisco’s first Indigenous People’s day with Dancing Earth Creations. Other creative interactive projects include the mixed-reality project Transmission at the FuturePlay Festival in Edinburgh and Future of Storytelling Festival in New York, Theatre Panik’s durational performance, Peep, at Scotiabank Nuit Blanche; Erika Batdorf’s Micro-theatre for Burnish at the Theatre Centre and Venice Biennale, the set and energy capture systems for Zata Omm Dance Projects’ Vox:Lumen at the Harbourfront Centre, and Silo No. 5 on Maria Island, Tasmania. He has worked on installations such as DTAH Architects’ Ravine Portal and on the lighting team for the Crimson Collective’s Ascension, a 150’ wide, origami-style crane sculpture at the 2010 Coachella Music Festival.

To create with unrestricted freedom. To make the unrealistic a reality. To imagine environments unbound by the laws of physics. To imagine our people and stories in the future.

Casey Koyczan is a Dene interdisciplinary artist from Yellowknife, NT, that uses various mediums to communicate how culture and technology can grow together in order for us to develop a better understanding of who we are, where we come from, and what we will be. He creates with whatever tools necessary to bring an idea to fruition, and specializes in sculpture, installation, 3D/VR/AR/360, video, and audio works such as music, soundscapes and film scores.

He is an international artist that has participated in many residencies, exhibits, festivals and collaborations in parts of the world such as Finland, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, The Netherlands, The USA, and the UK. He is also a musician, producer, filmmaker, actor/narrator, and advocate for future generations of artists and musicians.

He has a Multimedia Production diploma from Lethbridge College, a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Thompson Rivers University, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Manitoba.

XR Project 2023: Casey Koyczan delivered an introductory workshop on Blender.

Carey Dodge, Technology Director of Boca Del Lupo, is a board member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. Carey is a multidisciplinary artist and technologist whose work focuses on sonic arts, interactivity, installations, sound design and performance. He studied Electroacoustics at Concordia University and received a Masters at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast. He has collaborated with hundreds of artists in the creation of works mostly in Vancouver but also Montreal, Toronto, the USA, UK & Ireland.

Through his work with Boca del Lupo in the unique role as a full-time technology director for a theatre company he as worked with the core creative team to continually expand, challenge and grow what is possible and what are impactful uses of technology for expressing artistic vision and connection with each other.

XR Project 2023: Carey and Jay Dodge of Boca del Lupo hosted the XR artists at the Fishbowl on Granville island for a workshop on 360 video.

Caroline MacCaull (she/they) is a queer emerging interdisciplinary artist living and working on the unceded and stolen territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First nations. Through the amalgamation of movement, video, new media and technology, her practice questions, experiments, and converges ideas between different art forms to rediscover how they can cohesively coalesce. She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts and has had her work presented by Shooting Gallery Performance Series, Co.ERASGA’s Salon Series, Gallery Series 258, Vines Arts Festival, New Works, K.Format/documenta 15 (Kassel, Germany), Chaos Emblematic (Berlin), FOUND festival (Edmonton), Festival International de Danse Animée (Réunion) and the Scotiabank Dance Centre for three of their different programs 12 Minutes Max, Digital Dance and currently the DanceLab program for their 2022-2023 season. She has been artist-in-residence at What Lab (Vancouver), LEÑA (Galiano Island), Dance Victoria (Victoria, BC), ArtStarts Ignites (Vancouver), DeerLake (Burnaby) and NKK Dance Centre (Siem Reap, Cambodia). As a movement artist she has had the opportunity to collaborate and interpret movement with Peter Chin/Tribal Crackling Wind, Okams Racer, The Falling Company, Oksana Augustine and Restless Productions. Caroline is currently the Associate Artistic Director of the Chimerik 似不像 Collective which has given her the opportunity to work as a New media/Projection Designer on various projects with many different artists/organizations. Some of these include: Veronique West(Rumble Theatre), Mily Mumford (PTC), Jasmine Chen(Rice and Beans Theatre), Zahra Shahab, Restless Productions, Affair of Honor, Ralph Escamillan(Van Vogue Jam), Luke Reece(Theatre Passe Muraille), Arts Club, Active / Passive, Indian Summer Festival and Mayumi Lashbrook(Aeris Korper).

XR Project 2023: Caroline gave an artist talk.