Meet the 2023 Artists
Emma Roberts & Ben Joseph Andrews
Emma Roberts and Ben Joseph Andrews are a producer/director team working in XR. Their practice seeks to expand perceptions, reawaken curiosity and instil a sense of wonder to the world we inhabit. Exhibited works include The Moon Is Gone and All The Kings Are Dead (2016), commissioned for the VCA’s 50th anniversary, and immersive XR performances allthestarstheybleedtogether (2016) and STARLESS (2017) for City of Melbourne. In 2022 their durational VR installation Gondwana premiered at Sundance Film Festival before screening at SXSW, CPH:DOX, Sheffield Doc/Fest, BIFAN and MIFF, among others. Gondwana won Best Interactive/Immersive at ADGs and AIDC Awards, and was nominated for a Buzzie at the World Conference of Science and Factual Producers. They have spoken for MIT, Sheffield Doc/Fest, ACMI, Facebook and the Heide Museum of Modern Art, as well as mentored for workshops with CPH:LAB and the SAFC.
Ana Tiquia & Reanna Browne
Ana Tiquia and Reanna Browne are academically trained futurists, creative practitioners, and non-fiction storytellers. Their work centres worker voices in future of work (FoW) imaginaries. They explore creative technology to give voice to workers, and create spaces for hearing worker stories. They take a process-led approach to creative production that emphasises dialogue, including reflection upon their own experiences as workers. Reanna is a work futurist, designer, and founder of foresight consultancy, Work Futures, and is frequently requested to provide insight and analysis on the future of work by major media outlets. Ana is an artist, producer, future strategist, and founder of All Tomorrow’s Futures. She has developed creative, critical, and speculative technology projects for the cultural sector in UK and Australia including major exhibitions, installations, interactive and live performance projects. Reanna and Ana were 2022 Berry Family Fellows at the State Library of Victoria, researching the past, present, and futures of work to develop After Work – an audio essay series.
Isobel Knowles & Van Sowerwine
Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine create technologically adventurous, elaborately detailed animated films, XR and immersive installations. Their practice centres around using animation to speak to an audience’s imagination directly, exposing unexpected emotional responses. Their immersive work aims to bridge the gap between on screen and off screen reality, disrupting normal perception to create significant narrative engagement. Their short films have premiered at Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, and their installations have won awards at Prix Ars Electronica, QAGOMA New Media Art Award and have shown in major institutions across the globe. Isobel and Van recently completed Night Creatures, an augmented reality stop-motion animation for the 2022 Melbourne International Film Festival, recipients of the inaugural MIFF XR commission. Night Creatures is premiering internationally at the 2023 International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Tony Briggs & David Pledger
Tony Briggs and David Pledger have worked together for more than twenty years. They have a keen, sustained interest in each other’s practices and processes, and an enduring curiosity about each other’s methodologies and artistic languages. They have collaborated on a raft of theatre, live performance, digital media and interdisciplinary projects as artists and curators including the car park-performance Scenes of the Beginning from The End (2001-3), the video installation This Is (Not) Erinsborough (2008), the app-based development project XV (2018) and the curatorial program for ANAT SPECTRA 2022 :: Multiplicity. Their inspiration for working on this project is the digital performance work, K, which premiered at Melbourne International Festival 2002, opened the Vienna Festwochen 2003 and closed the Seoul Performing Arts Festival 2005 in a newly commissioned bi-lingual production. On K, Tony and David collaborated respectively as actor and writer/director/designer.