The April 2026 issue of the Metacreation Lab for Creative AI newsletter (received via email) has an unusually heavy emphasis on Philippe Paquier’s (professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology and director of the Metacreation Lab for Creative AI) activities,
Philippe Pasquier Presents on Creative AI at Digital Research Alliance Webinar
In February [2026], Dr. Philippe Pasquier, director of the Metacreation Lab, gave a webinar as part of the Humanities and Social Sciences series organized by the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. The talk explored how creative AI tools are enabling the partial or full automation of creative tasks and what these developments mean for artists, educators, students, and the creative industries.
The presentation introduced several generative systems developed at the Metacreation Lab for computer-assisted sound design, music composition, and visual generation. It also shared insights from evaluations conducted with the music software industry, examining issues such as user experience, ethics, sense of authorship, and technological acceptance.
Philippe Pasquier Presents on Creative AI and Co-Creation at UVic
As part of the Orion Lecture Series at the University of Victoria, Dr. Philippe Pasquier, director of the Metacreation Lab, gave a talk on Creative AI and Co-Creation. The presentation explored how AI systems can function as creative partners through co-creative tools for music and content generation. Pasquier highlighted the importance of small-data model crafting as an alternative to large cloud-based models, enabling artists to retain sovereignty, authorship, and aesthetic control over their work, while advocating for AI to be developed as a public utility that supports human creativity.
In late February, Metacreation Lab’s PhD candidate Arshia Sobhan and Dr. Philippe Pasquier led a two-day workshop on Autolume at the University of Victoria. The workshop introduced participants to Autolume, a visual AI system developed at the Metacreation Lab for artistic creation using small-data generative models. Artists, students, and researchers explored hands-on workflows for training and performing with custom models while maintaining creative control over their datasets and outputs.
Philippe Pasquier Participates in Canada’s National Summit on AI and Culture
Dr. Philippe Pasquier, director of the Metacreation Lab, participated as a Bridgebuilder at the National Summit on Artificial Intelligence and Culture, held March 16-17, 2026, in Banff, Alberta. The national gathering brought together leaders from the cultural sector, technology industry, research community, civil society, and government to discuss the future of AI in the arts and culture.
As part of the Summit’s Reflection Zones, Pasquier helped facilitate cross-sector discussions around the themes Build, Protect, and Empower, supporting dialogue and the development of practical ideas to guide future collaborations and policy considerations at the intersection of AI and culture in Canada. During the event, he also presented a demonstration of Autolume, showcasing the Metacreation Lab’s small-data approach to generative AI for artistic creation.
Submissions are now open for the 7th Conference on AI Music Creativity (AIMC 2026), which brings together researchers, artists, and technologists working on AI-assisted music creation, computational creativity, and creative AI systems. The conference will take place in September 2026 in Berlin. Dr. Philippe Pasquier serves as a member of the conference’s steering committee.
Abstract submission: April 4, 2026
Full paper, music, and tutorial submissions: April 18, 2026
Expanded 2026 – Conference on Animation and Interactive Art
The Expanded Conference on Animation and Interactive Art (Expanded 2026) invites submissions exploring animation, media art, and experimental moving image practices at the intersection of art, technology, and society. The conference will take place as part of the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. Dr. Philippe Pasquier serves as a research track co-chair in this conference.
If you are curious about the [Canada] National Summit on Artificial Intelligence and Culture, I have more from participant Kris Krüg’s Dispatches from Canada’s First AI + Culture Summit, which can also be seen in my March 23, 2026 posting (scroll down about 25% of the way to the subhead titled: [Canada] National Summit on Artificial Intelligence and Culture.
There’s a local (Vancouver, Canada) event coming up, as well as, a call for papers, an opportunity to watch a workshop presented in Toronto, Montréal, and Berlin and more in these highlights from the April 2025 issue of the Metacreation Lab for Creative AI newsletter (received via email). The first items are being listed in date order.
Ars Electronica and Vancouver AI [artificial intelligence] Community Meetup
From the April 2025 Metacreation Lab newsletter,
Call for Papers – EXPANDED 2025 at Ars Electronica
The 13th edition of the EXPANDED Conference, focusing on animation and interactive art, will be held from September 3–5, 2025, at the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, as part of the Ars Electronica Festival.
Organized in cooperation with ACM [Association for Computing Machinery], the conference invites submissions in categories of Research Papers and Art Papers. Topics of interest include AI-generated images, generative art, virtual production, human-AI collaboration, XR, and more.
Vancouver AI – April 30 [2025] at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre
Metacreation Lab has proudly supported the Vancouver AI Community Meetup since the beginning. This time, Mission #16 of BC’s vibrant AI community meetup series. This edition features a talk by Philippe Pasquier, exploring the latest in generative and creative AI systems.
Also on the lineup is a special performance by K-PHI-A, a live trio featuring Philippe, PhD student Keon Ju Maverick Lee, and VJ Amagi (Jun Yuri). Their piece, Revival, is an improvisational audiovisual performance where human musicians and AI agents co-create in real time. It blends percussion, electronics, and AI-driven visuals using Autolume and other systems developed at the Metacreation Lab.
Ars Electronica started life as a festival in 1979 still being produced annually and is now a larger enterprise. From the Ars Electronica About webpage,.Note Links have been removed
Art, Technology, Society
We have been analyzing and commenting on the Digital Revolution since 1979. Since then, we have been developing projects, strategies and competencies for the Digital Transformation. Together with artists, scientists, technologists, designers, developers, entrepreneurs and activists from all over the world, we address the central questions of our future. The focus is on new technologies and how they change the way we live and work together.
…
A new festival. The first Ars Electronica begins on September 18, 1979. 20 artists and scientists from all over the world gather at this new “Festival for Art, Technology and Society” in Linz to discuss the Digital Revolution and its possible consequences. This Ars Electronica is small, but groundbreaking. The initiative for this came from Hannes Leopoldseder (AT), director of the Upper Austria regional studio of the Austrian Broadcasting Company (ORF), who is passionate about everything that has to do with the future. Together with the electronic musician Hubert Bognermayr (AT), the music producer Ulli A. Rützel (DE) and the cyberneticist and physicist Herbert W. Franke (AT), he lays the foundation stone for a festival that will become the world’s largest and most important of its kind.
…
Between art, technology and society. Over the past four decades, a number of pioneers have turned Ars Electronica into a creative ecosystem that now enjoys a worldwide reputation.
Since 1979 we celebrate once a year the Ars Electronica Festival. More than 1,000 artists, scientists, developers, designers, entrepreneurs and activists are coming to Linz, Austria, to address central questions of our future. For five days, everything revolves around groundbreaking ideas and grand visions, unusual prototypes and innovative collaborations, inspiring art and groundbreaking research, extraordinary performances and irritating interventions, touching sounds and rousing concerts.
Since 1987 we have been awarding the Prix Ars Electronica every year. With several competition categories, we search for groundbreaking projects that revolve around questions of our digital society and rehearse the innovative use of technologies, promising strategies of collaboration and new forms of artistic expression. The best submissions will receive a Golden Nica, considered by the global media art scene to be the most traditional and prestigious award ever.
Since 1996 we have been working at the Ars Electronica Center year after year with tens of thousands of kindergarten children, pupils, apprentices and students on questions concerning the ever-increasing digitalization of our world. The focus is on the potential of the next Game Changer: Artificial Intelligence.
Also since 1996 we operate the Ars Electronica Futurelab, whose international and interdisciplinary team of artists and scientists is researching the future. With interactive scenarios, we prepare central aspects of the Digital Revolution for the general public in order to initiate a democratic discourse.
1998 we initiated create your world. The year-round programme is developed together with young people and includes a competition for under 19 year olds, a festival of its own and a tour through the region. We see create your world as an invitation and challenge at the same time and want to encourage young people to leave the role as mere users of technology behind, to discover new possibilities of acting and designing and to implement their own ideas.
2004 we started Ars Electronica Export with a big exhibition in New York. Since then we have been to Abuja, Athens, Bangkok, Beijing, Berlin, Bilbao, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Doha, Florence, Kiev, London, Madrid, Mexico City, Moscow, Mumbai, Osaka, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Tunis, Venice and Zaragoza. Together with partners from art and culture, science and education, business and industry, we organize exhibitions and presentations, conferences and workshops, performances and interventions at all these locations.
Since 2013 our team at Ars Electronica Solutions has been developing market-ready products inspired by visions and prototypes from the artistic cosmos of Ars Electronica. We develop innovative, individual and interactive products and services for exhibitions, brands, trade fairs and events.
Since 2016 we are active all year round in Japan. Especially in Tokyo and Osaka we work together with leading Japanese universities, museums and companies, develop and present artistic projects, design workshop series and Open Labs and dedicate ourselves to the future of our digital society in conferences.
In order to actively shape the digital revolution, people are needed who have a feel for change and recognize connections, develop new strategies and set a course. This is precisely where the 2019 created Future Thinking School aims to support companies and institutions.
Whether at home in the living room or in the office, whether in the classroom or in the lecture hall, in the streetcar or subway, on the train – from everywhere Home Delivery accompanies our virtual visitors on an artistic-scientific journey into our future since 2020.
All our activities since September 18, 1979 have been documented in the form of texts, images and videos and stored in the Ars Electronica Archive. This archive provides us with a unique collection of descriptions and documentations of more than 75,000 projects from four decades of Ars Electronica.
The Expanded Conference (Expanded 2025) will take place from September 3rd to 5th as part of the Ars Electronica Festival 2025. This call for paper focuses on academic papers in the field of Expanded Animation and Interactive Art that explore and experiment with visual expression at the intersection of art, technology, and society. We will have two categories (Research Paper and Art Paper), where submissions will undergo a rigorous review process. All selected speakers will be given a free pass to the Ars Electronica Festival (September 3rd to 7th).
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
3D Scanning
AI-generated Images
AI-based artworks
Artistic Computer Animation
Art & Science collaboration projects
Audio-visual Experiments
Data Journalism and Animated Documentary
Data Visualizations
Digital Media Art History
Digital, Hybrid, and Expanded Theater
Expanded Animation
Generative Art
Human-AI interaction and Human-AI collaboration
Hybrids between Animation and Game
Media Facades
Music Visualization
New approaches to artistic research and practice-based methodologies
Participatory art projects
Performance Projects
Playful Interactions and Experiences
Projection Mapping
Projects using NFT, Metaverse, Social Media
Reactive and Interactive audio/visual Work
Real-time CG
Scientific Visualizations
Site-specific Installations
Sound Art and Soundscapes
Tangible Interfaces and New Forms of Experiences
Transmedia Narratives
Virtual Humans and Environments
Virtual Production
VR, AR, MR, XR
…
Again, the submission date for your paper is April 27, 2025. Good luck!
Vancouver AI Community Meetup
Prepare yourself for some sticker shock. Tickets for the meetup are listed at $63.00. As noted earlier, there will be a “talk by Philippe Pasquier, exploring the latest in generative and creative AI systems.and a special performance by K-PHI-A, a live trio featuring Philippe, PhD student Keon Ju Maverick Lee, and VJ Amagi (Jun Yuri). Their piece, Revival, is an improvisational audiovisual performance where human musicians and AI agents co-create in real time.”
Here’s more about Vancouver AI meetups in a video, which appears to have been excerpted from the March 2025 meetup,
We Don’t Do Panels. We Do Portals. Vancouver AI: March 2025 Recap
This wasn’t a meetup. It was a lightning strike. A 3-hour detonation of mind, matter, and machine where open-source fire met ancestral spirit, and the UFO building lit up like a neural rave.
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⚡ What Went Down:
Damian George (Steloston) & his son Ethan kicked the night off with a warrior’s welcome—Indigenous songs from Tsleil-Waututh territory that cracked open the veil and set the frequency.
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Cai & Charlie spun lo-fi beats with a side of C++ sorcery. DIY synths, live visuals, and analog rebellion powered by AI hacks and imagination. This is what machine-human symbiosis sounds like.
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Michael Tippett dropped cinematic subversion with Mr. Canada, a gonzo AI-generated political series where satire meets social critique and deepfakes become truth bombs. (The king has a button that disables the F-35 fleet—yeah, that happened.)
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Cian Whalley, Zen priest & CTO, took us beyond the binary—teaching us how emotion, code, and consciousness intersect like neural lace. Toyota factory metaphors and Digital Buddha hotlines included.
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Philippe Pasquier, the SFU professor we don’t deserve, taught us how to train your own AI models on your art. No scraping, no stealing. Just artists owning their data and their destiny. Bonus: transparent LED cubes and a revival performance next month with AI-powered music agents. 🔮🎶
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Michelle from Women X AI showed us what a real grassroots intelligence network looks like: 45+ women in tech meeting monthly, giving back to the DTES, and building equity into the foundation of AI.
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Niels showed us what radical vulnerability looks like—raw stories of startup survival, burnout, almost crashing (literally), and choosing sustainable hustle over hypergrowth hype.
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Loki Jorgensen repped the new Mind, AI, and Consciousness crew—channeling 2,000 years of philosophical grind into one big ontological jam session. Curious cats only.
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Patrick Pennefather & Kevin the Pixel Wizard rolled out UBC’s AI video lab with student creators turning prompts into art and AI into cinema. Kevin’s mentorship = 🔥.
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Brittany Smila, our resident poet laureate, slayed the crowd with a poem that read like a bootleg instruction manual for being human. Typos included. Plum cake recipes too.
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Darby stepped up with real UX [user experience design] energy—running card sorts and mapping our collective brain to build a proper web infrastructure for the VAI [Vancouver artificial intelligence] hive mind. Web3 who?
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Rival Technologies’ Julia & Dale announced our first-ever Data Storytelling Hackathon. $2,500 prize, survey data that slaps, and a chance to show how AI can amplify truth instead of burying it. (Brittany wrote the hot dog prompt, you’re welcome.)
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Cloud Summit’s YK Sugi, Bibi Souza & Andre made waves repping an all-volunteer, all-heart community cloud event coming in hot during Web Summit week. Code meets care. Sponsors fund causes. Real ones only. Fergus dropped serious policy weight—WOSK Centre for Dialogue BC AI report now live. If you want a seat at the government table, this is your guy.
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Kushal closed the night with a flamethrower. Called out UBC’s xenophobic DeepSeek ban. Defended open-source warriors from China and France (💥shoutout Mistral). No prisoners. No apologies. Just truth. –
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Khayyam Wakil wrapped it all up with the keynote of the night: a design rebel’s journey from Saskatoon boats to LA VR labs to immersive media Emmys. Lessons in surrender, reinvention, and the real art of quitting right. 🔥
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📍Location: H.R. MacMillan Space Centre — Vancouver, BC (aka the UFO mothership)
🪐 Astronomers on deck. Observatories open till 11. Community stays weird till 10. 🎧 Full audio, speaker list & projects: vancouver.bc-ai.net
🎟️ Next portal opens May 28: lu.ma/VAI17 🖤❤️✊🔥🏴
We don’t do TED Talks. We host real-time cultural reckonings. This is AI for the people—and it’s only getting louder. Bring your edge. Bring your stickers. Bring your weird.
You can go here to get your ticket for the April 30, 2025 Vancouver AI Community Meetup and to find out about more about some of the AI events in Vancouver. You may want to check out the possibility of getting an annual pass or membership in the hope of making attendance more affordable.
Two papers and two workshop recordings from the Metacreation Lab
From the April 2025 Metacreation Lab newsletter,
Missed the Autolume Workshop? Watch It Online Now
After holding Autolume workshops in Toronto, Montreal, and Berlin, we brought the Autolume workshop online earlier in April, and the recordings are now available.
Whether you’re new to Autolume or want a refresher, this hands-on session walks you through training your own generative models, creating real-time visuals, and exploring interactive art, all without writing a single line of code.
The Metacreation Lab will be at ISEA 2025 with both a paper presentation and a live performance.
PhD student Arshia Sobhan, with Dr. Philippe Pasquier and Dr. Gabriela Aceves-Sepúlveda, will present “Broken Letters, Broken Narratives: A Case Study on Arabic Script in DALL-E 3”. This critical case study examines how text-to-image generative AI systems, such as DALL-E 3, misrepresent Arabic calligraphy, linking these failures to historical biases and Orientalist aesthetics.
In collaboration with sound artist Joshua Rodenberg, Arshia will also present “Reprising Elements,” an audiovisual performance combining Persian calligraphy, sound art, and generative AI powered by Autolume. This performance is an artistic endeavour that celebrates the fusion of time-honoured techniques with modern advancements.
Our paper “MIDI-GPT: A Controllable Generative Model for Computer-Assisted Multitrack Music Composition” is now officially published in the proceedings of the 39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
MIDI-GPT leverages Transformer architecture to infill musical material at both track and bar levels, with controls for instrument type, style, note density, polyphony, and more. Our experiments show it generates original, stylistically coherent compositions while avoiding duplication from its training data. The system is already making waves through industry collaborations and artistic projects.