What's this event?

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

This is a Sydney Games Festival edition of Avant Harde Drive, where we'll hear from some speakers who are working at the intersection of games, live performance, art, cinema and technology.

Sydney Games Festival is in its first year. It's a week of community-run games (and game-adjacent) events, whose various volunteer organisers have teamed up to shine a light on our local creative scene. P.S. I'm also part of the team running Making Waves, a showcase event for game audio.

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

What's planned?

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

Simone Chua is an internationally exhibiting contemporary installation artist, and principal of design studio amigo and amigo, who exhibit internationally across, Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East. Highlights include commissions for The Science Museum London and Eurovision, and recurring invitations to exhibit at international light festivals such as Vivid Sydney (Australia), Lights On Stratford (Canada), i Light Singapore, River of Light (England), Lumino (Canada), Doha Light Festival (Qatar), and many others. Simone will be sharing her desire to explore beyond lighting design and sculpture and into deeper areas of sensory experience.

Matt Hughes is a creative technologist developing mixed reality for stage and public spaces. His work across performance and installation uses computer vision for artistic expression and audience participation. His work has been shown at arts festivals across Australia, Europe and South America, and his PhD at UTS explored mixed reality in live performance. Matt will be sharing his work designing and building Pointcaster, a real-time engine for capturing, combining, analysing and broadcasting 3D scenes using depth cameras and point clouds.

Angela Hamilton is a choreographer and artistic director whose practice sits at the intersection of dance, theatre, visual design and audience immersion. As founder and Artistic Director of Twisted Element, she is known for critically acclaimed productions like Opus, Ritual and Aura Mechanica. Angela's career spans Australia, the UK and Europe including work with Hack Ballet, The Infinite Bridge and Transform Dance Company, and guest teaching at institutions like The Rambert School. She'll speak about how she integrates themes of futurism, dystopias and humanity in her work. Don't miss her upcoming show, ECHOFORM, in Marrickville!

Alexis Weaver is an electronic composer and sound artist, and an Associate Lecturer in Composition and Music Technology at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she advocates for diversity, accessibility and community in electronic music. Alexis’ work has been presented at La Biennale di Venezia, Sydney Opera House, Australian Parliament House, MCA Sydney, SXSW Sydney, the Australia Museum, TEDxSydney and broadcast internationally. Alexis is a PhD candidate at University of Sydney, researching how music, sound and art-science collaborations can further science communication and education. She'll be sharing her journey across these very diverse worlds.

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 often 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! The event runs every 6 months or so, whenever I have time to pull it together.

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

Contact the host of Avant Harde Drive: Creative Tech Meetup