wHY CULTURAL TECHNOLOGIES?
Cultural technologies do more than reflect society; they actively shape how communities make a home in a changing world. As global volatility increases, cultural systems can offer essential ways of grounding, adapting, and enabling collective meaning-making.
By addressing fragmentation and amplifying localized narratives, the Lab aims to reclaim culture as a dynamic force for resilience rather than as a passive reflection of existing power structures.
SHIPWRECK at Milieux Institute Concordia University, Montreal. Photo: Ana Isabel Duque
Incubation
Objectives
Global Collaboration: Facilitate the exchange of innovative ideas among cultural practitioners worldwide.
Increased Visibility: Amplify the reach and impact of climate-focused cultural practices.
Localized Action: Pilot and refine solutions to specific contexts (based in Canada with fieldwork globally).
Digital Innovation: Use advanced media tools to support engagement and dissemination.
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Goblin Market is an artist’s economic lab inspired by the magical quality of fairytales and fables. The approach highlights relational exchange emphasizing care and generosity.
This work is enabled through a place-to-place network of global creatives, each developing their responses to the increasingly volatile world in which we live.
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Nous, led by Egyptian-Canadian cultural producer Shady Khalil, is a cultural and intellectual initiative rooted in the Arab diaspora in Canada. It offers a safe, inclusive, and dynamic space — both physical and virtual — where secular and progressive Arabs can express themselves freely, connect across differences, and reimagine Arab identity beyond religious and political boundaries.
While rooted in the Arabic-speaking world, Nous embraces the full cultural spectrum of the Arab region — including Amazigh, Kurdish, Assyrian, Nubian, Coptic, and other historically marginalized communities — affirming the ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity that has long shaped its cultural identity.
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Shipwreck is an exploration of art as something to be lived in and among. Six North American artists have brought with them ruins of potential futures of ecological, political, and cultural crisis. Six Icelandic artists were then tasked with making a home among these ruins.
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Yuzu, led by multi-disciplinary artist Kyvita, is a Non-for-Profit Organization that develops experimental learning and educational models for artists and cultural thinkers. These frameworks are designed to support self-directed exploration, ontological inquiry, and boundary pushing creative practices.
Programs span across Canada, the United States, and the Philippines, with future plans for global expansion. The goal is to build a distributed network of creators who are supported not only artistically but ontologically, shaping a new generation of cultural engineers.
Gabriel Junqueira Maciel Teixeira, response to SHIPWRECK at Milieux Institute Concordia University, Montreal. Photo: Ana Isabel Duque
TEAM & CONTRIBUTORS
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Luisa Ji
Project Lead
Luisa Ji is a creative strategist and cultural technologist working at the intersection of public imagination, digital transformation, and systems of care. With over a decade of global experience, she leads participatory programs that use storytelling, worldbuilding, and culturally-specific technological adaptations to help institutions navigate cultural and ecological volatility.
As Studio Director at UKAI Projects, Luisa has delivered initiatives across Canada, South Korea, Iceland, and the UK, supporting artists and emerging arts organizations transform their practices. Her background spans civic experience design, AI literacy, and cultural infrastructure, with speaking and workshop credits at SÍM Residency (Reykjavik, Iceland), Watershed (Bristol, UK), msdm (London, UK), MUTEK Montreal (CA), Société des arts technologiques (CA), and Milieux Institute (CA). She is an alumna of Julie’s Bicycle Creative Climate Leadership program (in partnership with The CSPA) and the Emergence Magazine Seeds of Renewal Leadership program.
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Benjamin Lappalainen
Project Lead
Benjamin Lappalainen is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist, creative technologist, and educator creating interactive installations that blur the boundaries between digital and physical experience. His work explores how emerging technologies can foster new forms of human connection and creative expression, often incorporating audio-reactive visuals, computer vision, AI, and algorithmic processes into innovative interaction design.
As an educator, Benjamin leads workshops and mentorship programs for diverse communities that bridge technical skill-building with experimental arts practices and community engagement. His current research focuses on developing open source software for social impact, creating accessible tools for creative coding and interactive media while investigating how technology can amplify rather than replace human creativity. Through his work with organizations like InterAccess Gallery, Long Winter Music & Arts Festival, and UKAI Projects, he supports artists in developing technically sophisticated work that remains deeply human-centered.
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Husna Farooqui
Communications and Marketing Lead
Husna Farooqui is a diasporic interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker based in Toronto. In one of her roles as Marketing Coordinator, she works to reach and engage artists and audiences alike at the Music Gallery, an experimental institution in the city that has been a mainstay since 1976. At UKAI Projects, Husna works as a resident philosopher, where she is interested in connecting disparate conceptual threads across groups and contexts and working within the space of accumulating complexes.
With ties and placeholders in South and South East Asia, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Middle East, Husna’s sonic and visual artwork similarly reflects the invisible and innumerable lines, breaths, and crossings between worlds. As an artist, she works with sound, film, food, and installations and has been exhibited at re:assemblage collective and UKAI. She holds a BA Honours in philosophy (Acadia University, University Medal in Philosophy) and an MA in philosophy (University of Calgary) where she was twice awarded the Alberta Graduate Excellence Scholarship for her research.
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Sunjeong Hwang
Local Lab Lead—Seoul, South Korea
SunJeong Hwang is a contemporary artist and new media composer exploring the evolving relationships between post-humanism, emergent technologies, and ecological systems. Through multidisciplinary research and artistic experimentation, Hwang synthesizes poems, manifestos, AI, generative coding, data systems, and temporal structures into a distinct transmedia practice, producing multi-sensory environments, video works, installations, performances, audiovisual works, and sound-based compositions. Recognized as a SONGEUN Art Award finalist and ISEA 2023(FR), Future Tense(HK) awardee, Hwang’s works have been exhibited and performed at SeMA(KR), DAFT C-Lab(TW), ACC(Asia Culture Center), IBS(Institute for Basic Science, KR), Sonic Acts Biennale(NL), UKAI Project(CA), Prectxe(KR), Tokyo TDSW(JP), and Mutek JP+MX, among others. Hwang continues large-scale productions and interdisciplinary collaborations with choreographers, scientists, and technology researchers. Hwang is a 2025 Transmediale Resident.
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Michael F Bergmann
Creative Technologies Advisor
Michael F Bergmann is a neurodiverse techno-optimist who explores novel technological approaches to storytelling, performance, and play. His research and creative practice aim to apply improvisational techniques and critical discourse principles to human-robot and human-AI interactions and communication to foster empathy. Their mediums of engagement include theatre, dance, installations, mixed and augmented reality, and collaborating with digital minds. His physical being is mostly located in Toronto and is a faculty member in Performance at The Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University, where they teach and conduct research through their Technological Research in Performance Lab (tripl.ca).
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Daria Morgacheva/Dora
Contributor
Toronto-based artist Daria Morgacheva, born of both academic curiosity and emotional sensitivity, Dora’s creative universe bridges her background in physics and biology with a keen interest in the natural world and emerging technologies. These elements often ripple through her work, which flirts with the aesthetics of extended reality and the philosophical inquiries of posthumanism. Her live shows, described as transformative and connective, have shared stages with artists such as Alessandro Cortini, E-Saggila, and Myst Milano, and have lit up venues like the Drake Underground and Tranzac.
Outside her solo work, Dora is a member of bikebike, a rhythm-forward instrumental trio, and a frequent collaborator in Toronto’s experimental and electronic scenes. Her multimedia sound installations have been presented at UKAI Projects and DesignTO, reflecting her interdisciplinary approach to sonic expression. As one of the forces behind Borscht Radio, Dora also supports a vibrant network of experimental electronic artists.
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Koohyar Habibi
Contributor, Sound/Media Engineer
Koohyar Habibi is a toronto-based producer, composer, and co-founder of record label Secret Contact. In his compositional practice, he finds new approaches to infuse the Iranian micro-tonal music system with western techniques and modern principles. With formal musical training as a Classical Oud performer, and being self taught in electronic music, his own unique production style roots in industrial Techno, Dub, EBM, no wave, dnb, and middle eastern folk music.
About UKAI Projects
UKAI Projects is the ideal incubator for the Cultural Technologies Lab because of its experience working across cultures, technologies, and systems of adaptation. With initiatives like Please Don’t Understand This and the Shipwreck project, UKAI has shown a consistent ability to engage complex global challenges through thoughtful, place-based, and participatory approaches. Its network of international partners—including collaborators in Jordan, Uganda, Egypt, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, the UK, Kenya, and Iceland—positions the organization to develop cultural technologies that are both locally specific and globally informed. By fostering interdisciplinary collaborations and amplifying diverse cultural narratives, UKAI transforms ideas into grounded action, leveraging its relationships to connect community-driven strategies with global frameworks. This blend of local focus and international reach ensures the Lab’s goals of resilience and adaptation are met with insight and care.
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