We are on sacred ground. Northwestern University is on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires—the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa—as well as the Menominee, Miami, and Ho-Chunk nations. Before it was stolen from them through colonization and forced removal, this land was a site of trade, travel, gathering, and healing for more than a dozen other native tribes. The state of Illinois is still home to more than 100,000 tribal members. In the spirit of healing and making amends for the harm that was done, we acknowledge the native and indigenous peoples who called this land home. We pledge ourselves as members of the Northwestern School of Communication to turn our statements into action and build better relationships with native and indigenous communities in Evanston, in Chicago, and throughout the region.
We are pleased to welcome you to our convening and to the Wirtz Center at Northwestern University’s downtown campus. We hope this weekend serves to inspire cross-pollination, big thinking and new connections at the crossroads of cutting-edge technology and live storytelling.
We convened this gathering with an aim to shake up, challenge and encourage collaboration. We are thrilled to share work and ideas by leading theorists and makers of live theatrical performance, as well as immersive and interactive digital art.
Our programming asks critical questions about the increasingly central role of technology in our lives, on and off stages, even as it provokes innovation through conversation, play and exchange.
If you have any questions, please reach out to us at findingnewforms@northwestern.edu or speak with one of our organizers.
Thank you for joining us.
Special thanks to the Dean E. Patrick Johnson and the School of Communication; the Illinois Arts Council, the Hope Abelson Artist-in-Residence Fund; Northwestern Information Technology and the Emerging Technologies Lab; Stephan Moore; Michael Constantino; Liviu Pasare and Stoptime Live and the Department of Radio, Television and Film at Northwestern University.
*Light Refreshments Provided by Labriola Chicago*
*Light lunch available, provided by Labriola Chicago*
*Catering provided by Labriola Chicago*
Sweet Dreams is a surreal, satirical installation that shows that food is not just sustenance, but also part of our identity, our desires—and sometimes an illusion. The work reveals how advertising and brands influence our daily actions—often with cheerful images and characters that obscure the reality of production. This multi-sensory, location-based, immersive experience premiered in 2024 at Factory International in Manchester.
This installation contains two scenes from Sweet Dreams. The Heyday Room depicts the “golden age” of the fictional Real Good Chicken Company. Here, we encounter the mascot Chicky Ricky, represented in paintings and sculptures. The space feels playful and nostalgic, but also shows how mascots build trust and stimulate desire for products—while simultaneously alienating us from the actual food and its production. A floor-to-ceiling projection is part of the project’s “Research Department,” surreally reflecting what customers want from their relationship with food.
A Marshmallow Laser Feast and Factory International Production | Created by Marshmallow Laser Feast (Robin McNicholas, Ersin Han Ersin, Barnaby Steel) | Written by Simon Wroe | Featuring Munya Chawawa, Morgana Robinson, Reggie Watts, Verity Henry | Executive Producers: Eleanor (Nell) Whitley, Mike Jones, John McGrath, Gabrielle Jenks | BFI Executive Producer: Ulrich Schrauth | Made with the support of the BFI Filmmaking Fund | For Sweet Dreams Ars Electronica | Producers: by Roxie Oliveira, Martin Jowers | Technical Direction: Artists & Engineers (Louis Mustill, Arron Smith) | Art Direction: mcbess | Original Music: Finn McNicholas | Sound Design: Carolyn Downing | Production Design: David O’Neill | Unreal Engine Factory Lead: Sam Twidale | Unreal Engine Content Lead: Chris Mullany | Post Production Lead: Chris Vincze | 2D Animation: Nicolas Macia | Generative AI Tooling & Production: Nilor Corp (Lucas Moskun, Stephen Henderson, MK (Matt Klisz), Sebastian Monroy, Dean White)
Particle Ink unfolds within a universe of light known as the 2.5th Dimension – a hidden realm that surrounds us at every moment. It is the in-between place: where the rabbit lingers before being pulled from the hat, the fleeting space we slip into just before sleep, the threshold between the seen and the unseen.
This dimension is inhabited by beings called Lumins. Known in different cultures as fairies, sprites, or “little people,” Lumins exist as threads of pure light, weaving stories that connect imagination to reality.
Through performance, projection mapping, interactive technology, with AR created by @lightpilled (IG), audiences are invited to glimpse the 2.5th Dimension. Here, devices act as modern-day hag stones – ancient portals once believed to reveal the fairy realm. In Particle Ink, they open windows into this hidden world, allowing audiences to encounter the Lumins and step into a living graphic novel where light itself becomes the storyteller.
A co-creation of Toasterlab (directed by Ian Garrett) and V-Kind Arts and Theatre (led by Vanesa Kelly), A.I. Campfire brings together emerging technologies and ancestral knowledge in a way that feels grounded and considered. Garrett, who also serves as Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University in Toronto, has long explored the intersection of sustainability, scenography, and immersive design. His scenographic approach, informed by ecoscenographic principles, shapes a multisensory environment where sound, light, and spatial composition evolve in real time with the narrative.
Audiences are invited to join Symbiolene, an A.I. entity trained on centuries of myth and oral tradition, as it channels stories of Selkies, Kelpies, and other shapeshifting spirits deeply rooted in Scottish culture. Written, co-directed, and co-produced by Vanesa Kelly, this debut production signals a meaningful commitment to stories that reconnect us with the land and with each other. Kelly’s vision acknowledges the role technology might play in revitalizing ancestral teachings, and A.I. Campfire emerges as the result of a collaboration that balances technological curiosity with cultural reverence.
You are the Ocean (2017), created by Özge Samanci and Gabriel Caniglia, generates ocean waves and clouds in response to the brain waves of a single participant. The participant wears an EEG headset that measures the user’s approximate attention and meditation levels via brain waves. Through concentration and relaxation, the subject can control the water, sky, and weather conditions. The attention level generates storminess: with higher concentration, the waves get higher, and the clouds thicken. By calming their mind, the subject can create a calm ocean.
Humanity emerged from the oceans, yet their vastness obscures the true scale of our impact. The consequences of human activity are collective, shaped by industrialization and the rapid evolution of technology. These forces have driven population growth, exploited ecosystems, and disrupted the planet’s natural balance. Our analytical, profit-driven mindset prioritizes speed and efficiency, often at the expense of the environment, leading to profound ecological crises. You Are the Ocean serves as a reminder that our existence and ways of thinking directly shape the planet. If we cease to view the oceans merely as a resource and instead recognize ourselves as an extension of them, we may begin to internalize Donna Haraway’s insight: humans are not superior to any ecosystem but are deeply entangled within the interconnected web of all living systems.
Credits:
Creative Lead: Ozge Samanci
Coding and Implementation: Gabriel Caniglia
Sound Design Consultation: Stephan Moore
Demo Video: Deborah Libby
My Data Body is a virtual reality (VR) artwork created at the University of Alberta as part of the interdisciplinary research creation project Know Thyself as a Virtual Reality. The project which developed from a previous artwork Deep Connection (Oliver 2021) brings together different forms of personal data such as medical scans, social media, biometric, banking and health data in an attempt to make visible and manipulable our many intersecting data corpuses so that in VR they can be held, inspected and dissected. In My Data Body, the medically scanned, passive, obedient, semi-transparent body (Cartwright 1995) becomes a data processing site that can be pulled apart, de- and re-composed or as Yuval Harari warns ‘surveilled under the skin’.
In My Data Body, the magnetic resonance (MR) scanned body of artist Marilène Oliver floats prone within a cloud of Oliver’s textual Facebook data. Into the semi-transparent, virtual body are multiple other data corpuses downloaded from social media platforms plotted into cross sections of the body. In the horizontal plane, Mac terminal data is plotted into bone, Google data into muscle and Facebook data into fat. In the vertical plane are plotted data usage agreements and into the depth plane are texts from various data privacy charters. Passwords and logins flow back and forth through veins and arteries, whilst high resolution retinal and dental scans and meshes of organs and bones are suspended within the quantified and datafied body (Lupton 2016).
Visual art: Marilène Oliver (Edmonton), sound: Scott Smallwood (Edmonton), poetry: J.R Carpenter (Leeds) and Stephan Moore (Chicago)
Jo Cattell (Playwright/Director) is a leading voice in the convergence of live theatre and immersive technologies, reimagining storytelling possibilities through the development and creation of new plays with tech. Her work has appeared at Sundance Film Festival, the BBC, Sky Television, Cirque du Soleil, and multiple US and UK theaters. She is a member of the LightPoets theatre collective, whose immersive graphic novel, Particle Ink: The House of Shattered Prisms, opened at MGM Luxor Hotel and Casino, Spring 2024. The LightPoet’s created Particle Ink: Speed of Dark, which performed at The LightHouse, Las Vegas, through 2022, as well as creating Particle Ink’s onstage metaverse for TED:2022 where the audience witnessed a world-first syncing of AR over 1400 devices with live performance. She is resident artist at the world-renowned Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois, with whom she created Hummingbird, an immersive theatrical experience with VR, which performed at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago Children’s Theatre and at Siggraph, Canada. She is a 3Arts awardee, a Joan Mitchell Center Fellow, a 2021 Illinois Artist Fellow, a Barbara Whitman directing award finalist and a Perkins Coie awardee. Cattell was the Maggio Directing Fellow at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. She recently adapted Oedipus into an immersive experience at the University of Rochester, New York, and is under commission with Writers Theatre. Cattell is Head of content and co-creator at Kaleidoco, an innovative technology and entertainment company creating original IP and technology.
Annie Dorsen (Creator/Director) is a theater director working at the intersection of algorithmic art and live performance. Dorsen is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Spalding Gray Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Artists Award, and the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Her most recent project, Prometheus Firebringer, premiered at Bryn Mawr College in January 2023, and had a New York premiere at The Chocolate Factory in May, co-produced by New York Live Arts and MAX Media Art Xploration. The piece then moved Off-Broadway to Theater for A New Audience in Fall ’23. Previous algorithmic performances include Infinite Sun, an algorithmic sound installation commissioned by the Sharjah Biennial 14 (2019), The Great Outdoors (2017), Yesterday Tomorrow (2015), A Piece of Work (2013), Spokaoke (2012), and Hello Hi There (2010). These pieces have been presented at numerous theatres and festivals world-wide, including at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (New York), Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), the steirischer herbst festival (Graz), the Holland Festival (Amsterdam), and Festival d’Automne (Paris). In 2010, she collaborated with choreographer Anne Juren on Magical, presented at ImPulsTanz Festival Vienna, Lyon Biennale de la Danse, Théâtre de la Cité International Paris, Kampnagel Hamburg, and many others. In 2009 she created two music-theatre pieces, Ask Your Mama, a setting of Langston Hughes’ 1962 poem, composed by Laura Karpman and sung by Jessye Norman and The Roots (Carnegie Hall) and ETHEL’s Truckstop, seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival. In 2012 she worked again with Questlove, directing his concert performance Shuffle Culture at the BAM Opera House. She is the co-creator of the 2008 Broadway musical Passing Strange, which she also directed. Spike Lee made a film of her production of the piece, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009, and was released theatrically by IFC in 2010. Her pop-political performance project Democracy in America was presented at PS122 in spring 2008. The short film, I Miss, originally the centerpiece of Democracy in America, screened at American Film Institute Festival (AFI Fest), SXSW Film Festival, The New York Film Festival’s “Views From the Avant-Garde” and the Nantucket Film Festival. A retrospective of Annie Dorsen’s algorithmic work was presented in 2022, at Bryn Mawr College with major support by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. The publication Algorithmic Theater: Essays and Dialogues, 2012-2022 was created as a literary companion to the event, collecting a decade of writings by and about Dorsen, including dialogues with artistic collaborators in addition to provocative essays on theater and technology. She has taught at University of Chicago and Bard College, and been a frequent guest lecturer at numerous universities and art schools in the US and abroad. She recently completed a J.D. from NYU School of Law, where she concentrated on tech policy and civil rights.
Ian Garrett (York University) is a designer, producer, educator, and researcher in the field of sustainability in arts and culture. Ian is Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University and Graduate Program Director for Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. He is Producer for Mixed Reality Performance collective Toasterlab; and director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, a think tank on sustainability in arts and culture. He maintains a design practice focused on the integration of ecology, technology 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 with Toasterlab, Groundworks, looks 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. It continues to screen at festivals and was broadcast nationally on PBS in the US through October and November 2022.Notable projects related to EcoScenography include the set and energy systems for Zata Omm’s Vox:Lumen at the Harbourfront Centre and Crimson Collective’s Ascension, a solar 150’ wide crane at Coachella. With Chantal Bilodeau, he co-directs the Climate Change Theatre Action. His writing includes Arts, the Environment, and Sustainability for Americans for the Arts; The Carbon Footprint of Theatrical Production in Readings in Performance and Ecology, and Theatre is No Place for a Plant in Landing Stages from the Ashden Directory. He has been involved with hundreds of theatre productions as a lighting and media designer, having received the 2006 LA Weekly Theater Award for best lighting for Permanent Collection at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, and having been the lighting designer for Song of Extinction with Moving Arts, which won the 2008 LA Weekly Theater Award for Production of the Year. He also works as a producer having worked on the premier of Richard Foreman and Michael Gordon’s What to Wear at REDCAT, the Prague tour for Torry Bend’s puppet adaptation of Aimee Bender’s Loser, two dozen shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe including the physical theater piece on aging and memory At Sundown, and the city-scale geolocated AR project Transmission. He was an associate producer on The Medea Project, a cross-cultural production of Medea in Athens and Los Angeles.Before coming to York, Ian taught at California Institute of the Arts, and developed curriculum for the University of Houston. He has been a visiting instructor at the National Theatre School where he teaches courses on sustainability in design and production. He previously served as the Executive Director of the Fresh Arts Coalition, an arts service organization focused on awareness and marketing in Houston, TX, and as consultant and staff for the LA Stage Alliance. He has also been on staff at Stages Repertory Theatre (Houston), DiverseWorks Art Space (Houston), and the Will Geer Theatricum Botancium (Topanga, CA), and in the lighting departments of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the Public Theatre in New York. Ian received dual MFAs in Lighting Design and Producing from CalArts, and has a BA in Architectural Studies and Art History from Rice University. He serves on the Board of Directors for Associated Designers of Canada, and the theatre Company the Only Animal. He was the Curator for the US for the 2019 Prague Quadrennial, and the Digital Curator for the US for the 2015 and 2013 editions of the PQ, as well as co-chair and coordinator for EcoScenography for World Stage Design 2022 in Calgary.
Robin McNicholas (Marshmallow Laser Feast) – Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) is an experiential artist collective. We believe in the power of stories to tickle senses and shift perceptions. Our work takes people on a multisensory journey to where imagination and information collide. From coders to poets, chemists to ventriloquists, brands to institutions, we collaborate with specialists in all disciplines. To explore new forms of culture, interrogate our relationship with the world around us and leave a glittery slug trail as we journey through the cosmos. We tell stories that untangle, entangle and flavour our reality, blurring the lines between art, immersive experiences, XR and film. Alive in public spaces, galleries, museums, parks, nature reserves and the metaverse, our work is grounded in research. Designed to carve out space to expose, explore and expand our relationship with the living world. We’ve exhibited internationally at institutions including; ACMI, Aviva Studios, Barbican Centre, DDB Seoul, Fundación Telefónica, Museum of the Future, Phi Centre, Royal Botanical Gardens Kew, Sundance Film Festival and SXSW. Our work has been featured in renowned publications such as; the Guardian, New Scientist, Wired, Independent, Creative Review, The Times and more. Our artworks and exhibitions can be presented internationally and we welcome collaboration enquiries.
Stephan Moore (Northwestern University) is a sound artist working at the intersection of performance and interactive systems. His creative work is primarily concerned with the creation and perception of sonic environments, encompassing practices in field recording, physical programming, studio production, audio spatialization, loudspeaker construction and interactive software design. These often-collaborative projects manifest as sound installations, sound designs and scores for dance and theater productions, solo and group performance works and improvisations, generative compositions, and recordings. He is a co-founder of the Chicago Laboratory for Electro-Acoustic Theater, which produces monthly concerts of multi-channel audio at Chicago’s Elastic Arts. As a musician and sound engineer, he toured with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 2004 to 2010. Moore holds an MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he studied with and later toured with Pauline Oliveros. He also has a PhD in Computer Music and Multimedia Composition from Brown University. He joined the Department of Radio, Television and Film at Northwestern University in 2015.
Özge Samanci (Northwestern University) is a media artist and graphic novelist, is an associate professor at Northwestern University’s School of Communication. Her interactive installations have been exhibited internationally at venues such as Museu do Amanhã, Siggraph Art Gallery, FILE Festival, Currents New Media, The Tech Museum of Innovation, WRO Media Art Biennial, Athens International Festival of Digital Arts and New Media, Piksel Electronic Arts Festival, and ISEA. Her graphic memoir, Dare to Disappoint (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2015) has been translated into six languages. Her second graphic novel, Evil Eyes Sea (Uncivilized Books, 2024), was named one of The Guardian’s best graphic novels of 2024 and won the 2025 Cartoonist Studio Prize. It is slated for translation into French and German. Her drawings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and Slate Magazine. Samanci has received several awards, including the Berlin Prize in 2017, when she was also the Holtzbrinck Visual Arts Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. She was honored with the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumni Award (2020) from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Artist Fellowship Award in Media Arts (2023) from the Illinois Arts Council.
Lawrence Birnbaum (Northwestern University)
Heidi Coleman (University of Chicago)
Erin Courtney (Northwestern University)
Patrick Jagoda (University of Chicago)
Chloe Johnston (Lake Forest College)
Yingdan Lu (Northwestern University)
John Muse (University of Chicago)
Brett Swinney (DCASE, CIty of Chicago)
Henry Wishcamper (Bustling Spaces LLC)
We thank our donors who make it possible to develop and sustain the quality of productions at Northwestern University. The following individuals and institutions have made gifts to one or more of the following areas: the Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts, American Music Theatre Project and the Music Theatre Funds. All gifts were made between September 1, 2024 and August 31, 2025.
Donate online at giving.northwestern.edu.
Thank you for supporting Northwestern University Theatre and Dance!
E. Patrick Johnson, Dean of the School of Communication and Annenberg University Professor
Lori Barcliff Baptista, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs and Advising
Roderick Hawkins, Associate Dean of External Affairs and Chief of Staff
Molly Losh, Associate Dean for Research
Bonnie Martin-Harris, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs
Jeff Brown, Associate Dean for Finance and Administration
Rayvon Fouche’, Associate Dean for Graduate Education
Tanya Palmer, Assistant Dean & Executive Artistic Director
Bharath Chandrasekaran, Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Jeremy Birnholtz, Communication Studies
Joshua Chambers-Letson, Performance Studies
Jacob Smith, Interim Chair of Radio/Television/Film
Henry Godinez, Theatre
Melissa Blanco Borelli, Director of Dance
Megan Roberts, Associate Chair of Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Courtney Lynam Scherr, Associate Chair of Communication Studies
Erin Courtney, Associate Chair of Radio/Television/Film
Tommy Rappley, Associate Chair of Theatre
Jorge Silva — Director of Business Operations & Managing Director
Michael Constantino — Associate Managing Director
Pete Brace — Marketing & Development Manager
Heather Basarab — Production Manager
Valerie Tu — Production Manager, Chicago
Gianna Carter — Production Coordinator
Aziza Macklin — Audience Experience Manager
Jamie L. Mayhew — Box Office Manager
Lynn Kelso — Imagine U Artistic Mentor
Ryan T. Nelson — Music Supervisor
Dylan Reyno — Technical Coordinator
Shannon Perry — Technical Supervisor
Emily Baker — Assistant Technical Supervisor
Dylan Jost — Scenic Carpenter
Micah Hofferth — Scenic Carpenter
James Weber — Scenic Artist
Eileen Rozycki — Assistant Scenic Artist
Chris Wych — Properties Supervisor
Kathy Beach Parsons — Properties Assistant
Eileen Clancy — Costume Shop Supervisor
Jessica Donaldson — Assistant Costume Shop Supervisor
Kristy White — Cutter/Draper
Pamela Brailey — Cutter/Draper
Renee Werth — Stitcher/Crafts Supervisor
Eli Hunstad — First Hand
Peter Anderson — Lighting & Sound Supervisor
Michael Trudeau — Associate Lighting & Sound Supervisor
Nate Walczyk — Lighting and Sound Technician
Sara Kurensky — Marketing Assistant
Stephen J. Lewis — OGMC Arts and Media Producer
Stephanie Kulke — OGMC Fine Arts Editor
Masi Asare — AMTP Artistic Director
Alaina Parr, Alex Myres, Alex Yang, Allyson Vasquez, Amanda Swickle, Amy Xu, Anah Shaikh, Arawen Alberg, Arran Kennedy Orive, Ashley Flores, Avery England, Aydn Calhoun, Ayla Richardson, Benny Wu, Cannon Elliott, Ciara Farris, Clio Siegel, Crom Amaya, Daniel Cho, Elijah Curtin-Adelman, Elle Pierre, Ellsworth Sullivan, Gavin Yi, Gemma Cohen, Ghino Lee, Haley Randall, Henry Rohrback, Isabella Mason, Jessica Guo, Jordin Amoah, Josaphina Brinkerhoff, Josefina Espino, Kapila March, Katherine Li, Kira Carpenter, Kris Lambert, Lucian Cruz, Mariah Waters, Maya Avery, Michael Peterson, Millie Rose Taub, Miracle Idowu, Morgan Marin, Natalie Mendoza, Noor Maghaydah, Nora Fox, Olivia Czyz, Olivia Kieffer, Olivia Wise, Owen Meehan-Egan, Pranav Singh, Poseybelle Stoeffer, Roie Dahan, Rose Peters, Ryan Cooke, Charles Lewis, Sebastian Vidra, Seidy Pichardo, Sophia Mitton-Fry, Sydney Chan, Sydney Frazure, Tamyrha Dunac, Tvesha Gupta, Valentina Brander, Vicky Laguerre, Walter Todd, Will Claudius, Yehuda Zilberstein, Yooha Park, Yumi Tallud
