Panel event: What will art projects look like in 2050?
For International Women’s Day, we hosted a provocative panel discussion on the future of art projects with a panel of acclaimed speakers working at the cutting edge of AI, art, design and placemaking.
PANELISTS (FROM LEFT): MICHELLE WANG (SUGAR GLIDER DIGITAL), SIMONE CLOW (ZEBRAR), MIA FORREST (DIGITAL ARTIST) and THEA-MAI BAUMANN (4a CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ASIAN ART) IMAGE CREDIT: SHERRY ZHENGIs AI inherently bad for art and artists? What is the role of digital art in the public art space? How will technology continue to change the way we interact with art and public spaces?
On Tuesday, the 7th of March Sugar Glider Digital and Art Pharmacy presented our second event in The Art Project Series: What will art projects look like in 2050?
The panellists included:
Simone Clow (Zebrar)
Thea-Mai Baumann (4a Centre for Contemporary Asian Art)
Mia Forrest (Digital Artist)
Michelle Wang (Sugar Glider Digital)
The panel pondered the impacts of camera-less technology, carbon neutralisation, holographics and how to navigate the metaverse.
One highlight of the night was when Thea-Mai Baumann revealed:
“When my @metaverse [Instagram] account got disabled by Meta, I minted the first post that I put out there as @metaverse in 2011 as an NFT to prove that I was “Metaverse”. Corporations own your digital identity but there are ways that you can take it back through NFTS”.
A theme that emerged from our speakers throughout the night was the agency and autonomy enabled by their digital practice.
Mia Forrest, trained as a filmmaker and a commercial photographer, was able to reinvigorate her career through exploring technology-driven artmaking techniques and embracing the self-determinative freedom of blockchain. She is now a successful self-employed digital artist who regularly mints and sells her artworks on chain.
Simone Clow also shared how she went from working in the New York film industry, where there is an “expiry date, especially for women,” to starting her own production company, Zebrar. Specialising in mixed reality productions, Zebrar is now an established name working at the cutting edge of VR and immersive experiences for commercial brands. Simone has been able to shape her own narrative through embracing new technology and continuously evolving her skillset.
Sugar Glider Digital also showed breathtaking work by our artists, Mia Forrest, Jacob Leary, James McGrath and Billy Ryan on screens generously supplied by Samsung Australia
