Isobel Knowles & Van Sowerwine’s work blends three-dimensional miniatures, photography, animation and immersive technologies in unique and emotionally charged, surreal environments. They create technologically adventurous, elaborately detailed animated storytelling through immersive installations, expanded cinema and VR. They are fascinated by tension that lies beneath an apparently calm surface and how stories and the way they are told can change our perception of the world. Knowles & Sowerwine’s practice includes deep research and community connection. ‘Night Creatures’ (2022) had a diverse range of film enthusiasts creatively telling their moving stories of how film and festivals changed their lives. For their 2019 VR work ‘Passenger’ they interviewed taxi drivers and recent migrants to shape the story of arrival in a new land. Their 2016 work ‘Out In The Open’ portrayed a fictional story of a trader at Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne, devised after spending extensive time with stallholders and workers. They have exhibited work at major institutions including the ICA, London, the Seoul New Media Biennale, the Art Gallery of NSW and at QAGOMA. They have premiered work at major international film festivals, including at Cannes (where they were awarded a Special Mention), Chicago, Sundance, Rotterdam and Venice. Their installation ‘You Were In My Dream' won the 2010 Premier of Queensland's National New Media Art Award. Their 2011 interactive installation, 'It’s a jungle in here', won an Award of Distinction (Interactive Arts) at the 2012 Prix Ars Electronica. In 2021 they were commissioned by the Museum of Australian Photography to create ‘Can't Do Without You’, blending three-dimensional miniatures, photography and animation to explore the psychological impact of lockdown in Melbourne. Their 2022 Melbourne Film Festival XR commission ‘Night Creatures’ won awards at the Australian International Documentary Conference in 2023 and Tricky Women Austria in 2024.

Kenneth Lambert’s experimental practice embraces disintegrated matter and the inexorable expressions that reflect the human condition. Lambert’s conceptual approach captures the contemporary zeitgeist by transposing themes found in science to illuminate current social issues and rising anxieties of our time. At the intersection of technology and the humanities, the artist’s investigations have led to works utilising particle acceleration to relate to climate change and data translation technology to investigate digital autonomy. Lambert’s cross-disciplinary practice encompasses digital, film, expanded drawing, painting, installation and performance. With a professional background that encompasses museum and exhibition design and filmmaking, Lambert draws on diverse skills to thread through his artistic practice. Since 2016 he has regularly exhibited in solo and group shows with notable Australian ARIs and commercial galleries, including Artereal, Articulate project space. COMA and Galerie pompom. His work has been featured in award shows in Australia and the USA. In 2019 he was named Grand Prix Prize Winner of the One-Self competition, which resulted in his work Data Blue being featured at the Scope Art Fair in Miami. In Australia, he has been a finalist in the Churchie Emerging Artist Prize, The Alice Prize, Dobell Drawing Prize, Incinerator Gallery Prize - Art for Social Change, The Fisher’s Ghost Prize, Kilgour Art Prize, Lumen Art Prize and Mosan Art Prize.  He has participated in various various artist residencies across Europe and Australia. Most recently, he completed a 6-month self-directed residency with Amnesty International in Australia and the Bundanon Trust on the south coast of NSW, culminating in the development of my latest series, ‘Augmented Intervals.’ This new body of work is a testament to his ongoing exploration of themes that convey a sense of displacement.

Dr Gail Priest has a multidisciplinary practice that focuses on the aural realm. Working across installation, composition, recording and performance she is interested in creating works that dwell in a liminal zone between figuration and abstrac-tion. She has performed live electro-acoustic compositions and exhibited sound-based installations nationally and inter-nationally including in Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, France, Norway and the Netherlands. She also curates events and exhibitions and writes fictively and factually about sound and media art.

Galit Ariel is a scholar, technofuturist, author and creative, exploring the wild & imaginative side of bleeding-edge technologies. Through her experimental art/tech practice Galit challenges resemblances, gaps & glitches across digi-tal, physical, and cognitive spaces. Her award-winning work spans across Mixed Reality installations, subversive animations and speculative digital interactions. Currently a research-creation PhD candidate at York University, her research focuses on the intersection between embodied technologies, culture and imagination. Galit is an OGS (Ontario Graduate Scholarship) recipient, a gradu-ate research fellow in York’s Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, and York’s Feminist Digital Meth-ods Research Cluster. As a stream leader at the Feminist Digital Methods Research Cluster, Galit explores trans-feminist presence within digital spaces. The group’s 2023 research-creation project utilizes location-based AR to discuss femme digital appropriation, representation, and harassment – as Toronto public-facing walk-n-learn immersive activation. The project was features at the 2023 HASTAC conference and the 2023 Humanities Congress.

Dr Sarah Neville is an Australian choreographer and scenario designer who devises new media performance, instigates inter-disciplinary practices and invests in multi-platform processes and production outcomes. In 2021 Sarah was awarded an Arts SA Fellowship to create dance for virtual reality experiences. In 2022, Sarah received a PhD from Deakin University/ Cov-entry University researching embodied participation in im-mersive digital environments. In 2023 Sarah presented Evoca-tion AR trials at Liverpool Gallery and MOD, Transmittance at The Mill for Illuminate Festival and Glasshouse at MOD for SALA Festival. Sarah is currently a research associate at UniSA Creative/ IVE.