Avant Harde Drive: Creative Tech Meetup

What's this event?

Avant Harde Drive is a free talks night and meetup for artists and creatives working with emerging and immersive tech.

Not an artist, just love hearing about really cool projects? You're welcome too!

What's planned?

We'll have some guest speakers talking for 10min each, then doing a casual Q&A. You'll hear from:

Em Blamey is the Creative Producer for the Australian National Maritime Museum, creating exhibitions for audiences of all ages. She loves presenting subjects through hands-on interaction, and creating exhibits that are intuitive, appealing and durable. Em’s been at the Maritime Museum since April 2013, and before that worked at the Australian Museum and spent 12 years at Questacon - The National Science and Technology Centre. Em will be talking about the process of creating exhibitions.

Jordan East is a media artist who explores the relationship between technology and music through immersive video and augmented physical environments. Spanning video, projection, interactive installation and theatre, his projects often evolve in collaboration with improvisational musicians, using sensors and responsive systems. He's part of artist collective Friends with Computers, with recent presentations at Mode Festival and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts. In his presentation, Jordan will focus on some recent projects using Touch Designer.

Cuauhtemoc Moreno is a creative developer and game designer, who builds everything from popular browser games, to physical installations involving full-body motion, VR experiences and playable paediatric hearing assessments. He's worked across applied games (like surgical training) right through to quirky, DIY interactive events. He'll be sharing his experiences around the relationship between game design, playfulness, and improvised creativity.

Matthew Hermans had a 20 year career in VFX before founding the Electric Lens Company, a boutique studio producing projects using creative technology, motion capture and machine learning alongside a virtual production workflow. From scanning environments to volumetric capture and virtual human pipelines, Matt's creative production skills have seen him work with Harry Shearer from The Simpsons, Carl Cox, Whitney Houston, Ryuichi Sakamoto, “Dr Who” and a holographic work at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Matt will be taking us behind the scenes of the world's first gaussian splat commercial, made for Good Food!, which allowed audiences to walk around inside a memory using an Apple Vision Pro.

Between talks, we'll open the space up to grab a drink and meet others. 

Details?

It's free!

However Knox St Bar have opened especially for us, so it would be appreciated if you buy a drink at the bar to support the venue.

Spaces are limited, so please register for a free ticket in order to secure your spot. There's a waitlist, so if you can no longer attend it would be great if you could use the refund/cancel option so that someone else can take your spot.

What's the backstory here?

Hi! I'm Sally. I'm a musician and performer working with an animated music project called Big Sand. I've been using Unreal Engine, virtual production and motion capture to animate the band and perform live as an animated character - meeting a bunch of great creative people in the process.

However, I've had difficulty finding events or spaces in Sydney where there's a regular community of fellow creative-techy people. So I decided to start one! After a successful first few editions, this event is back for 2026 by popular demand. 

Questions? Suggestions? Want to help out? Hit me up - hello@bigsand.band :)