Molior is an organization specialized in the production of exhibitions and artistic projects which make use of technolo-gies as a creation, expression and action tool.
Since its foundation in 2001, Molior has presented numerous innovative projects in Canada as well as on the international scene in collaboration with multiple dissemination partners.
Molior also carries out various activities outside of estab-lished networks in order to stimulate audience development and foster access to high quality productions.

Place, portals and alternative realities are themes within the Awhi Incubator Project, a region-wide capacity-building project developing resilience in science-art-technology and transdisciplinary practice in Te Tai Tokerau | Northland (NZ). AwhiWorld (the creative innovation lab leading the project) will reflect on how these themes have played out in the course of the overarching project – including two specific outcomes: BIOS, a creative innovation lab focussing on portal generation and place-practice, and Alternative Reality Gardening, an international publication and symposium.

Leonardo — The International Society for Arts + Sciences + Technology — presents our approach to transdisciplinary art through network and field building with a vision for an inclusive and representative global creative community. We will share two indigenous-led projects from our fellowship and exchange programs that connect to the ISEA 2024 theme, Everywhen, and will serve as lenses through which to interpret the sub-themes of resilient stories, speculative practices, and ecologies of place. By sharing concrete examples of Leonardo’s programmatic work, we wish to exchange knowledge, build community, and explore partnership with the ISEA 2024 community.

The artistic interrelation between sound and image has a long and rich history, expanded recently through new multimodal possibilities such as immersive collective experiences.

The international project Understanding Visual Music, or UVM, mainly focuses on exploring fulldome and immersive environments and has organized symposia, festivals and workshops, and inspiring events in several countries, disseminating and promoting experiences and research-creation projects in the Americas, Asia, and Europe for over a decade. Understanding Visual Music has also helped to create a worldwide network of artists and scholars interested in visual music and associated mixed-reality actions.

Understanding Visual Music proposes that participants live an aesthetic experience different from those usually presented in planetariums and similar environments. A symbiosis between art, science, and technologies that converge in the possibility of offering an audiovisual narrative that does not follow the usual moulds but explores the limits of human perception in an attractive "traditional" context (e.g., planetariums and fulldome theatres), with an innovative artistic proposal such as visual music.

Understanding Visual Music proposes an encounter in collective immersive spaces as a way of weaving networks that connect artists, scientists and technology experts but also open the possibilities of exploring and enjoying visual music, fulldome experiences, and mixed-reality electronic art to everyone.

It can be difficult to acknowledge our own fragility. The equilibrium between a healthy environment, the energy our society needs to maintain or improve its usual lifestyle, and the world’s interconnected economies can pass more quickly than expected from a delicate balance to an entirely new reality where human beings would need to be more creative than ever before to survive. The frequency and severity of certain weather and climate-related events around us are increasing, and the ability of human beings to modify our adjacent surroundings has turned into a power capable of altering the planet. Do the electronic arts have a role in all this?

Traditional disaster management approaches are not enough to deal with the current problems and rising risks. New forms of collaboration are needed to inspire people and organizations to link knowledge with action.

Artists could inspire new explorations and contribute with innovative perspectives and critical thinking to actively participate in solving some of our major challenges, such as the spiraling environmental crisis. We need to develop creative ways to facilitate a paradigm shift toward a sustainable tomorrow. Creative thinking, innovative tools, and transdisciplinary actions could produce perceptual, intellectual, and pragmatic changes.

One of the initiatives that aim to use the media arts as a catalyst to generate a deeper awareness and create lasting intellectual working partnerships to face the many facets of the environmental crisis is: The Balance-Unbalance international project.

The international conference series Balance-Unbalance explores the intersections between nature and society, and the symbiosis needed to research, understand, and act in the light of ecological threats.

In this context of global menaces, the [media] arts and artists can help. Everyone has a role in the construction of the future, and artists, too. We must search, investigate, reflect, and act. We can create and invite others to analyze, engage, envision, and produce changes. It is not possible to wait longer or to delegate personal responsibilities.

By bringing people from very different sectors of our society to think together and facilitate multi, inter, and transdisciplinary collaborative project developments, Balance-Unbalance and its associated initiatives (‘art ⋈ climate’ and EChO) are turning feasible to connect artistic creation and tangible tools for change. Balance-Unbalance has been contributing to making social transformation happen.