SCI_ART 2026 Symposium Vancouver
AFTER THE DATA/CULTURAL CLIMATE FUTURES
Photo: © Matjaz Tancic
OCT 5, 2026
9:00 am - 7:00 pm
Multimodal Media Lab
6th floor - Suite 645
375 Water Street Vancouver, BC
Register here on Luma:
luma.com/g1pt6g0y
Presented by:
The EU Delegation to Canada, UBC Okanagan, Critical Future Studio/Lab,
MOVE37XR, and the Multimodal Media Lab
With support from the Canada Council for the Arts and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
SCI_ART 2026's Vancouver Symposium brings together European and Canadian artists working across art, science, technology, and environmental research. Through three extended artist conversations, live demonstrations, and a closing international exchange, the day considers how artistic research can make complex environmental and technological systems perceptible, create spaces for imagining possible futures, and reshape how environmental transformation is culturally experienced.
SYMPOSIUM Schedule
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Dr. Megan Smith, UBC Okanagan Impact Research Chair in Societal Resilience and Immersive Futures
T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss, educator, interdisciplinary artist and Indigenous ethnobotanist
Bryce Traister, Dean of Faculty of Creative & Critical Studies
Recorded video message from H.E. Geneviève Tuts, European Union Ambassador to Canada -
Ernst Logar (Austria) · Matjaž Tančič (Slovenia) · Dr. WhiteFeather Hunter (Canada)
Guiding question: What can artistic research make perceptible that might otherwise remain beyond ordinary human experience?
Scientific and technological systems allow us to observe environments, processes, and scales that extend beyond ordinary human perception. Making the Invisible Sensible brings together artistic practices that move between satellite observation, scientific infrastructures, microscopic life, and embodied experience. The conversation considers how artists work with scientific methods and technologies not simply to visualize what cannot readily be seen, but to translate these observations into cultural and sensory forms. Moving across scales from microbial systems to landscapes and planetary futures, the panel asks what artistic research can make perceptible that conventional representations alone cannot.
Moderator: Dr. Patrick Parra Pennefather, Associate Professor, UBC Theatre and Film; Master of Digital Media
Patrick Parra Pennefather is an Associate Professor in UBC Theatre and Film and is shared with the Master of Digital Media program. An interdisciplinary researcher, designer and award winning sound designer, his work explores mixed reality environments, spatial audio, immersive experience and collaborative approaches to emerging technology. His research and creative practice investigate how digital and sensory technologies shape human experience across physical and virtual environments.
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Carlo De Gaetano (Italy/Netherlands) · Manuela Pauk + Dr. Matija Vigato (Croatia) · Dr. Kelly Jaclynn Andres (Canada)
Guiding question: How can artistic research allow us to encounter and critically examine possible futures before they become reality?
How might artistic research allow us to encounter possible futures before they arrive? Rehearsing Possible Worlds examines speculation as a research method through practices spanning climate fiction, immersive virtual environments, ecological intelligence, living systems, and artificial intelligence. Rather than treating the future as something to be predicted, the panel considers how artists construct situations in which alternative ecological and technological relationships can be experienced, questioned, and tested. These practices invite audiences to move beyond familiar human scales and assumptions, opening space to consider how we might live differently within changing environmental systems.
Moderator: Yangos Hadjiyannis, Experiential Director and Digital Media Strategist
Yangos Hadjiyannis is a Vancouver based Experiential Director and Digital Media Strategist with more than 20 years of experience working at the intersection of storytelling and emerging technology. His practice spans XR, spatial computing, AI, immersive strategy and experience design, with projects and collaborations across international festivals, cultural institutions and research environments. His work explores the transition from storytelling to “storyliving,” using immersive technologies to create participatory experiences across physical and digital worlds.
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Informal conversation and exchange between artists, researchers, cultural partners, and guests from Canada and Europe.
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Serena Marija Akram (Malta) · Paweł Janicki (Poland) · Sylvia Grace Borda (Canada)
Guiding question: How can artistic and technological systems change the ways we experience and understand environmental transformation?
Environmental change is increasingly encountered through networks of sensors, computational systems, images, interfaces, and immersive technologies. Ecologies of Experience explores how these mediating systems shape what we notice, feel, and understand about changing environments. Bringing together approaches that include environmental and physiological sensing, computation and interactive media, and immersive observation of ecological systems, the conversation considers technology not simply as a tool for representing environmental knowledge, but as part of the experience through which that knowledge becomes meaningful. The panel asks how artistic practice can create new relationships between environmental observation, technological mediation, and lived experience.
Moderator: Mourad Bennacer, Program Manager, Société des arts technologiques [SAT]
Mourad Bennacer is a multidisciplinary artist, educator and program manager at the Société des arts technologiques [SAT] in Montréal, where he contributes to the development of immersive artistic practices, international residencies and partnerships. Specializing in immersive formats and spatial sound, he is curator of SAT Fest, the SAT's international fulldome festival, and Substrat, a series dedicated to immersive and multichannel audio practices.
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EU–Canada Conversation & Mixer
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Rasa Jautakaite-Tunaitiene, Head of the Regional Team for EU Foreign Policy Instruments covering the Americas
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Dr. Megan Smith, UBC Okanagan Impact Research Chair in Societal Resilience and Immersive Futures
Drawing together the SCI_ART 2026 program to this point, Dr. Smith will reflect on the residency, scientific and cultural site visits, artist exchanges, and public conversations that have shaped the program. The address will consider what these encounters reveal about artistic practice as a form of research and the role of art and science collaboration in making complex environmental and technological systems perceptible, generating new questions, and creating spaces for cultural, public, and policy dialogue. It will also look forward to how international knowledge exchange can support sustained collaboration between artists, researchers, institutions, and policy communities in Canada and Europe.
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Dr. James Day · Simon Pribac · Dr. Megan Smith · SCI_ART 2026 Artists
Bringing together perspectives from art, science, policy, and international relations, this closing conversation brings Dr. James Day, Simon Pribac, Dr. Megan Smith, and participating SCI_ART 2026 artists into dialogue about how interdisciplinary knowledge can move beyond cultural and academic contexts to inform policy and public decision making. The discussion will explore the role of art and science collaboration in making complex environmental and technological challenges accessible, creating dialogue across sectors, and contributing new perspectives to policy development. Drawing directly on the artists’ experiences and practices alongside perspectives from senior trade and foreign policy experts/officials, researchers and cultural leaders from Europe and Canada, the panel asks how international exchange can strengthen the connections between creative inquiry, scientific knowledge, diplomacy, and policy.
Guiding question: How can art and science collaboration contribute to policy, diplomacy, and collective responses to environmental and technological change?
Dr. James Day: Dr. James Day is a Research Associate and Senior Scientist at UBC’s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute, where his research spans low temperature physics, scanning probe microscopy, microwave spectroscopy, and physics education. As Program Manager for Ars Scientia, a transdisciplinary partnership connecting artists and physicists at UBC, he develops initiatives that foster knowledge exchange and collaboration across art and science.
Simon Pribac: Simon Pribac is Trade Commissioner at the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in Ottawa and the founder of SCI_ART. Drawing on experience in science diplomacy, cultural initiatives, and international collaboration, he conceived SCI_ART as a platform connecting artists, scientists, cultural institutions, and diplomatic partners. The initiative has grown into a multi-country network supporting interdisciplinary exchange between Canada and Europe.
Dr. Megan Smith: Dr. Megan Smith is the UBC Okanagan Impact Research Chair in Societal Resilience and Immersive Futures and SCI_ART Lead 2026. An artist and researcher working across immersive media, computational art, artificial intelligence, and environmental research, she directs the Critical Future Studio/Lab at UBC Okanagan. Her research explores how emerging technologies and artistic practice can make complex environmental and technological systems perceptible and create new forms of public engagement.
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Hosted by the Delegation of the European Union to Canada
An informal end of day gathering bringing together participating artists, researchers, partners, and guests from Canada and Europe. Hosted by the European Union, the mixer provides an opportunity to continue conversations from the symposium, develop new connections, and support ongoing international cultural and knowledge exchange.