NDF25 PROGRAMME
CONFERENCE - DAY 1
9:00 Conference opening
Karl Chitham ONZM (Ngāpuhi, Te Uriroroi) has been a champion for the arts in New Zealand for 20 years. He is currently Director of the Dowse Art Museum, Head of Arts and Culture for Hutt City Council and has held various other roles across the arts including as a curator and educator. He has been an advocate of the arts and artists as a trustee and advisor for a number of organisations including Artists Alliance, Te Roopu Mana Toi an advocacy advisory for Creative New Zealand, Wairau Māori Art Gallery the first dedicated public Māori art gallery nationally, and most recently as the inaugural Ambassador for Barnardos Aotearoa. Karl has written for multiple arts publications including co-authoring the ground-breaking publication Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of New Zealand and the Wider Moana Oceania and has been a selector and judge for dozens of national arts awards including the National Contemporary Art Award and the 2021 New Zealand at Venice Pavilion.
Tui Te Hau (Rongomaiwahine, Te Arawa, Ngāti Tuwharetoa) is the Chief Executive of Te Matarau a Māui, economic development agency and founder of Bird Island, a boutique consultancy focused on innovation for global good.
She has designed national programmes in the innovation and entrepreneurial space. This included the Lightning Lab, the blueprint for business acceleration in New Zealand and Mahuki, the world’s first accelerator for the culture and heritage sector.
Formerly, the lead of the Māori enterprise team for New Zealand’s international trade agency she supported the export aspirations of major indigenous entities and provided in-market support to NZ exporters as Trade Commissioner Melbourne. She has extensive experience in the culture and heritage sector supporting efforts to tell our nation’s rich stories and is an international speaker on innovation in the culture and heritage sector.
In her most recent role with the National Library, she led a team that developed educational experiences around our nation’s founding documents; He Whakaputanga, the Declaration of Independence, ti Tiriti o Waitangi and the Women’s Suffrage Petition. This included the journey to pay equity e-learning module, the ‘are we there yet’ speaker series and other resources for student and adult learners.
Tui works with entities focused on impact investing, STEM education, student entrepreneurship, a global knowledge exchange programme and supporting the next generation of Māori creatives.
Her current directorships include the Institute of Directors, Mary Potter Hospice in Wellington, Endometriosis NZ and the Dev Academy.
Libraries are essential civic spaces, offering free and open access to all. As audiences needs evolve through challenging times, such as the rapid adoption of advanced technologies and societal issues like the cost-of-living crisis—libraries have never been more critical to the communities they serve. How can libraries position themselves as dynamic physical hubs while embracing a future increasingly defined by digital innovation?
At State Library Victoria, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in both online and onsite engagement, with the majority of our audience now under 35- they expect a certain level of user-experience. To meet the expectations of our increasingly tech-savvy demographic, we are embedding digital at the core of our services, ensuring a seamless and responsive user experience that provides reliable access to information and knowledge anytime, anywhere.
This presentation will introduce the newly formed Digital Directorate at State Library Victoria and share insights into the ambitious strategy and Digital Experience Plan. You’ll get a sneak peek into key initiatives and learn how innovation, experimentation, processes, empowered teams, and publishing practices are driving the success for digital transformation, while staying true to the mission of accessibility and community connection.
Paula Bray has over twenty years' experience working in cultural heritage institutions, including the State Library of NSW, Powerhouse Museum, Art Gallery of NSW, and the Australian National Maritime Museum. She is currently the Chief Digital Officer at State Library Victoria where she is leading the Library’s digital future through compelling digital experiences that place the visitor at the heart.
Innovation and experimentation have been at the core of Paula’s work. She set up Australia’s first dedicated innovation lab in a cultural heritage organisation, the DX Lab at the State Library of NSW. She developed an award-winning team that experimented with technology to build new ways to get access to the collection and its data, both online and onsite. She co-published ‘Open A GLAM Lab’ with 16 peers from the International GLAM, (Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums) Labs community, highlighting the benefits of working in an experimental practice.
10:30 Morning Tea
This presentation explores how Māori values and data sovereignty can reshape our approach to library systems and cultural stewardship.
Through stories from the journey of Koha, the world's first open source library management system (born in Aotearoa), we explore examples of technology embodying kaupapa Māori principles including:
Manaakitanga through its open source sharing model
Kaitiakitanga in managing cultural materials
Whanaungatanga through its global community
Tino rangatiratanga by enabling local control
Our kōrero weaves together:
The origins of Koha and its community-sustained development
Practical examples of how libraries are using Koha to support Māori data sovereignty
Ways libraries are using Koha to support the revitalisation of te reo Māori and cultural resurgence
Opportunities for Māori communities to shape future library technology
This presentation explores how the intersection of the Koha open source community, kaupapa Māori, and Māori data sovereignty creates pathways for:
Community-controlled infrastructure
Protection of mātauranga Māori
Appropriate sharing protocols
Sustainable technological development
Māori technological leadership
By grounding library systems in Māori values and data sovereignty principles, we can create technology that better enables us to serve our communities.
Aleisha Amohia (Te Ātihaunui-a-Pāpārangi, Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Hāua, Cambodia, India) is a Technical Lead and Software Developer at Catalyst IT. She has worked with open source library and collections platforms since 2014. Her role has encompassed many responsibilities, from development to DevOps, as well as consulting and presenting around Aotearoa and overseas. Aleisha is passionate about open source software, data sovereignty, technology for good, and online safety, and regularly weaves these threads into her work. Aleisha is an advocate for gender justice and Indigenous rights, and holds roles with the National Council of Women, Innovative Young Minds, and Tūhura Tech.
Chris Cormack (Kāi Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe) is Kaihuawaere Matihiko at Catalyst IT in Wellington. He has a BSc in Computer Science and a BA in Mathematics and Māori Studies. He was the lead developer of the original version of Koha, an open source, fully featured, scalable library management system, and is passionate about the intersection of technology and Indigenous knowledge.
This presentation will introduce the archival value of responsible stewardship and discuss how this is a useful value when navigating digitsation and digital access in the online era. It will discuss the impact of digitisation programmes on researcher access to library and archival materials. The presentation will consider the opportunities and challenges for GLAM sector workers of researcher demand for digital access and suggest responsible stewardship as a useful concept when navigating management of library and archival digitisation programmes.
Jessica Moran (she/her) is the Acting Chief Librarian at the Alexander Turnbull Library, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa National Library of New Zealand. In this role she leads efforts to build, preserve, protect, and provide access to the Library’s collections and taonga. Throughout her career she has worked to help libraries and archives manage, preserve and make accessible our digital documentary heritage.
Heidi and Andrew developed a way of working with small, mostly volunteer-run organisations, to develop their digital capability.
The project was a New Zealand first, and possibly a global first, and a huge success, applying a methodology that needs to be shared. It could be adapted and applied to any project hoping to help smaller GLAMIR orgs.
The approach was non-colonial: everything was done with them, not to them.
Small organisations know digitisation will help them run better exhibitions, elevate their education programs, and give their communities, which they are tightly connected to, an unprecedented level of access. But starting digitisation requires a specialist level of knowledge and equipment, and it can be very disruptive initially.
The NZMM Digi Hub team of 4 embedded in each org for up to 3 months, learned and listened to what was needed, supplied equipment, developed tailored solutions to fit, and ensured everyone was involved in the process.
Warkworth and Districts Museum, Charlotte Museum and Howick Historical Village now have impressive and sustainable digital capabilities, beyond what some larger orgs are capable of, and a long list of other orgs in Auckland all gained knowledge or skills directly and indirectly from the project.
Andrew Hales, New Zealand Maritime Museum, Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa: Photography and Digital Lead, qualified forklift operator, truck driver and parttime mechanic, with management and logistics/operations experience in the private sector. Andrew has worked in museums for ten years, where he has photographed tens of thousands of objects and developed processes and systems for dozens of people to photograph many thousands more. He’s photographed everything from the 800m2 sails from KZ1 to Sir Ed Hillary’s KBE medal. A regular at NDF, he believes in a digital future and sharing knowledge.
Heidi Schulmpf, New Zealand Maritime Museum, Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa: Project lead, biologist, data junkie, understands Vernon CMS, collector of dead things and has an amazing ability to get the best out of people. Heidi has worked with collections for over 25 years, including GNS Science, Canterbury and Auckland Museums. She ran the Natural Sciences cataloguing project team at Auckland Museum, preparing specimens for digitisation. Heidi has collected a desiccated mouse found in the sails from KZ1 and knows how to manage bulk data via XML or CSV. She believes in making collections findable and searchable, accessible (where appropriate) and that if you care about culture and heritage, you care about ALL culture and heritage, no matter its repository. We all have a responsibility to help each other, especially those less well-resourced, as it's beneficial for the whole industry.
12:30 Lunch
This paper describes a major undertaking by the Upper Hutt Libraries Heritage Team to educate and engage its local community about the brief period at the end of the 20th century when Upper Hutt was a major industrial centre. While a physical exhibition within the local library provided a focal point, digital and online technologies played a crucial role in the larger endeavour of which this was part. For instance, social media outreach via Facebook groups was pivotal to uncovering information, locating artefacts, and identifying oral history subjects. The exhibition itself also contained important digital elements, most notably an audio-visual display of short films made using oral history extracts. Visitors selected and listened to these films via an old Telecom pushbutton phone (of the kind once made in Upper Hutt), modified using a raspberry pi mini-computer. Finally, to ensure ongoing impact, the exhibition was subsequently repackaged into various forms of online digital content, using both the Library’s Recollect website and the City Council’s ArcGIS StoryMaps tool. This presentation will discuss problems encountered and lessons learned, and how small local history teams, working on a minimal budget, can have maximum impact through leveraging the power of digital technology.
Reid Perkins is Te Māngai Mahara/Community Heritage Advisor at Upper Hutt Libraries, where he has worked since 2012. The Library was an early adopter of the Recollect platform and has always placed a strong emphasis on using digital technology for local history purposes. Reid has presented several times previously at NDF.
Tracey Kearns is a graduate of the Museum and Heritage Studies programme at Victoria University of Wellington. She was Te Tīeke Mahara/Co-ordinator Heritage and Archives at Upper Hutt Libraries from 2017 to January 2025. She is now Curator at Waitaki Museum in Oamaru.
Lizzie Errington is Manu Mahara/Librarian Heritage and Archives at Upper Hutt Libraries. She is a graduate of the Museum and Heritage Studies programme at Victoria University of Wellington.
LV LAB is the State Library of Victoria’s new prototyping and innovation lab, launching in early 2025. SLV LAB’s purpose is to experiment and test ideas using advanced technology, to open and enable access to Library collections, data, and spaces.
In this talk, Ana Tiquia (Head of Digital Strategy, Research & Insights, State Library Victoria) focuses on how SLV LAB centres the prototype. They will discuss the role of the prototype, its value, and how prototyping processes and thinking can help us realise more diverse technology futures in the cultural sector.
Sharing examples of SLV LAB prototypes and proof-of-concept projects, we will consider the potential impact of GLAM Labs as a whole, from a diverse futures lens. In exploring how cultural organisations can prototype the application of new and existing technologies, Ana will discuss how cultural practitioners are uniquely placed to shape our digital technology futures.
Ana Tiquia is Head of Digital Strategy, Research & Insights at State Library Victoria. With a background as an academically trained futurist, strategist, artist and cultural producer, Ana has worked at the intersections of art, technology, design and research for over 15 years in the UK and Australia. Ana is passionate about public participation in future imagining. They love using participatory methods to conduct research, develop strategy, and foster expanded thinking around data and technology futures.
Over the past couple of years, the National Library has been developing a framework for capturing and refining the impact of our digital services, supporting those impacts with qualitative, quantitative, and academic evidence, aligning them with strategic goals, and using them to better tell the story of our mahi. This framework is currently being put into practice in the form of an internally-developed Impact Hub.
In this presentation, Michael will share the lessons learned from this process, including but not limited to: the relational nature of impacts; the central importance of storytelling; ways that cultural memory organisations think about time; distinguishing between observation and analysis; and per the title, why "impact" is a terrible word for what we do.
Michael Lascarides is the User Experience Manager for the Digital Experience team at the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga, where he is charged with understanding current audiences, helping to ensure that they have the best possible experience, and identifying under-served audiences for future growth. Prior to joining NLNZ in 2013, Michael headed the web team at New York Public Library (in which capacity he first visited NDF) following many years as a designer, developer, and UX specialist for a wide variety of commercial clients. He lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin.
This talk will present the origins and ongoing mahi of Vailahi Vailahi's ‘Aahiga o Muna’ (House of Words), a postgraduate research project completed in 2024, addressing the climate emergency facing Tuvalu and a wide range of similarly situated Pacific islands.
Tuvalu, including the island of Nanumea, faces the existential threat of rising sea levels, which endangers both physical landscapes and cultural heritage. In 2022 Tuvaluan Minister Simon Kofe announced that Tuvalu will become the First Digital Nation: that it would digitally recreate its land, archive its rich history and culture, and move all governmental functions into a digital space.
Vailahi traveled to his ancestral land on the atoll of Nanumea, to capture and create digital material such as 3D scans, drone footage, and photogrammetry, in addition to conducting interviews with elders in order to gain deeper insight into the traditional significance of the sites and the oral histories and traditions associated with Nanumea.
Our presentation further contextualizes this mahi in terms of the impact a single person may have on cultural preservation using contemporary digital methods, while contrasting this with the complexity that the proposed Tuvaluan 'metaverse' projects represents.
Walter Langelaar is an artist/academic whose work in media arts and computational design questions our digitally networked cultures and infrastructure through artistic critique in varying dimensions, such as sculpture, installation, online performance and critical intervention.
Walter chairs the Aotearoa Digital Arts (ADA) Network, and is the coordinator of the Data.Mine research lab, as well as curator/producer for pr10r.art gallery.
Vailahi Vailahi is a postgraduate design student of Tuvaluan heritage seeking to address the urgent need to preserve culturally significant sites, in context of current climate emergencies, through high-tech digital methods such as photogrammetry, 3D laser scanning and VR technologies, along with the traditions and histories the sites represent.
The Australian Museum’s FrogID project addresses a critical need to safeguard our frog species, many of which face extinction.
By harnessing digital technologies and public participation for rapid, large-scale biodiversity data collection, FrogID has achieved conservation outcomes that traditional scientific methods could not attain alone. With over 370,000 app downloads and 88,000 user accounts, the project has amassed over 690,000 submissions, resulting in more than one million scientific records of frogs in just six years. Over 26 research publications have utilised FrogID data, revealing how frog species are responding to impacts of climate change and habitat modification, and nine new species have been discovered. Beyond science, FrogID fosters a stronger connection between community and country. Participants learn about frogs' roles and develop a sense of appreciation and awareness of their local biodiversity.
Digital challenges such as enhancing user experience and managing data effectively are met with innovative solutions, including the exploration of AI for frog call identification. In 2025, the project is developing machine learning models to embed AI in FrogID, leveraging the project’s unique acoustic dataset to train ML models for enhanced efficiency and accuracy of bioacoutsic frog monitoring.
As a prominent born-digital natural science collection, captured through a citizen science initiative, FrogID's impact is shaping conservation policies and inspiring public engagement with nature.
Megan Lawrence is Head of Digital at the Australian Museum (AM), leading digital experience design, development and media production. The Digital team works collaboratively with agencies and industry partners on web and mobile projects inspired by the AM's natural science research and cultural collections. Recent projects include the complete redevelopment of the Museum's flagship website australian.museum, product development of the FrogID citizen science project, accessible audio guides and digital twin experiences of museum exhibitions. Megan has also been collaborating with Audiocraft to produce a new form of museum podcast - Nocturnal Worlds: journeys through nature for sleep and relaxation.
Keepsafes is a project that aims to empower communities outside the Museum to be able to preserve their own taonga and histories for future generations.
However, giving conservation advice to the public can be fraught. There is a risk that advice offered in good-faith could result in damage if not interpreted correctly without in-person support. Canvassing the public to find out what they would like to take care of at home, Auckland Museum is developing a series of short videos for Youtube, TikTok and Instagram Reels. The content is short, snappy, and collection care focused, offering trustworthy advice that helps people protect their taonga from the 10 Agents of Deterioration. The videos incorporate techniques and supplies that the public can use, afford and are available to them, whilst understanding the home environment, and the pitfalls of preservation in the New Zealand climate.
This presentation will cover the production of the series, the adaptation of the Collection Care expertise into publicly accessible format, and the marketing of the end-product to make sure its reaching the right audiences.
Anika Klee is the Senior Collection Manager, Collection Care at Auckland Museum. A large portion of the role of Collection Care is educating staff on the 10 Agents of Deterioration and how we can slow down the effects on our collection, trying to keep them for generations to come. Originally from Wellington, Anika has been at Auckland Museum for 12 years in a variety of roles, and the museum sector since 2007 and enjoys the problem solving that comes with working with collections.
Steph Strock is the Web Content Producer & Analyst at Auckland Museum. Steph’s mahi focuses on better connecting the communities of Tāmaki Makaurau with their Museum and taonga. This has been achieved by digital content creation - making Auckland Museum’s collections and research accessible and engaging for the public. Recently the Museum successfully launched its new podcast, The Amp, which Steph writes and produces.
Empowering rangatahi to explore technology should have no barriers for them to be able to engage. At Tūhura Tech, we believe that every rangatahi has the potential to innovate, create, and lead in the tech world. This explores the strategies we’ve implemented to directly engage rangatahi and support them in discovering technology with them in a sustainable rangatahi led approach.
Tūhura Tech takes a “bring it to them” approach, going directly into communities to meet rangatahi where they are. By working with rangatahi on projects that interest them—whether it's game design, coding, robotics, or hacking—we foster an environment where they feel seen, heard, and inspired. This approach builds trust and allows rangatahi to grow beyond what is expected, proving that the only true barrier to their potential is what they have been exposed to.
This looks at how we can engage with rangatahi to support them and enable them to fully engage with our digital world in a way that is unique to them and sets them up for the future.
Leon Bowie, Tūhura Tech: Tinkerer, Programming, Hacker and Educator with a focus on empowering the next generation with a curiosity towards technology. Founder of Tūhura Tech a not for profit based in Te Whanganui a Tara (Wellington) but now operating in Porirua, Lower Hutt and has mahi spanning Aotearoa. Has been involved in technology education and outreach for the past 7 years from running code clubs, coaching robotics teams, organising competitions and everything in between.
At the Christchurch City Council Archives, we have used technology and creativity to create an interactive experience, with the launch of a collaborative and innovative self-guided digital walking tour. Winner of the 2024 ALGIM Customer Experience Award this project showcases innovation and creativity to increase engagement.
In 2022 we began to digitise our most fragile and hidden archives - capturing the stories of Christchurch’s early days. These treasures, once inaccessible to the public, paint a vivid picture of life for our early residents.
Following the success of guided walking tours in conjunction with Christchurch City Libraries, we wanted to increase its impact by moving the tour into a digital space. With the help of our GIS Spatial team, we used ESRI StoryMaps, harnessing available technology to create a self-guided digital walking tour. The walking tour is now a dynamic interactive experience, complete with photographic and audio content, taking participants on a journey back in time.
In our presentation we will share with conference attendees how we created the tour on a limited budget, and how we have inspired citizens and visitors to explore stories of the early city in an accessible and innovative way.
Annabel Armstrong-Clarke has had a 28-year career in libraries, archives and research spanning public and private institutions in New Zealand, the UK and Qatar. She been the Archivist for Christchurch City Council from 2007-2010, returning in 2022. She is passionate about finding creative ways for the community to engage with archive collections.
Sarah Tester has a Masters in Archives and Records Management and began her career contracting across higher education, business, and libraries in England. She has worked with archive collections of international significance, and on the development of innovative community projects to promote archive management to communities. Sarah moved to New Zealand in 2016 and since 2018 has worked for Christchurch City Council, most recently as Assistant Archivist for the Council.
The exhibition A Different Light : First Photographs of Aotearoa unites collections and expertise from three major institutions—Auckland Museum, Hocken Collections in Otago, and Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. This unique collaboration combines significant photographic archives, allowing each partner to contribute unique insights, resources, and historical artifacts that highlight New Zealand’s early photographic history. The exhibition allows original 19th-century photographs to reach diverse audiences by touring across the three venues.
Aligned with the touring nature of the exhibition, A Different Light includes a versatile digital photo interactive to deepen visitor engagement. This experience invites audiences to step into a 19th-century portrait studio where they hold still to capture and customise their own historical-style photograph. Using a touchscreen, visitors can add colours and select frames, all inspired by exhibition daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and prints. The final image can be emailed as a keepsake, merging traditional portraiture with digital customisation. The interactive has been crafted inhouse at Auckland Museum with adaptability in mind, allowing it to seamlessly integrate into each venue.
Shaun Higgins has been working with photograph collections for over two decades, ranging from numerous exhibition contributions to research into unknown photographers. He has a background in Anthropology, Art History and Photography combined with Museum Studies and specialist training in Photographic care and identification. He is currently responsible for management of the pictorial collections of photographs and paintings at Auckland War Memorial Museum including research, collection development, exhibitions and collaboration. Current research interests include early New Zealand photographs, conflict photography, photographic technology and its application including digital, computer vision and photographic identification.
Jessica Morgan is a Digital Experience Producer at Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, where she plans and produces engaging and innovative digital experiences for museum audiences. She has a background in development and creative arts and has experience working in both development and production roles within a museum context. This experience has allowed her to develop a strong understanding of developing digital projects from a technical and production perspective and has enabled her to deliver experiences across a range of technologies with a focus on enabling meaningful engagement for Auckland Museum’s diverse audiences.
One of the key benefits of this digital age is the ability to make knowledge easily accessible through technology. In 2024, Te Kotahitanga o Te Ātiawa Trust launched their Koha, an open-source library management system, to provide access to Te Ātiawa resources and taonga. The Trust formed a relationship with Catalyst, an open-source software company, to install Koha on the Catalyst Cloud - an Aotearoa owned and operated cloud computing service. Te Wainui Witika-Park (Catalyst & te uri o Te Ātiawa) and Ani Sharland (Pourangahau Tiaki Taonga - Manager of Research and Archives at Te Kotahitanga o Te Ātiawa Trust) will share experiences from the Koha implementation. These experiences include why Te Kotahitanga chose to partner with Catalyst and the potential impacts for te uri o Te Ātiawa, as well as providing insights around culturally respectful technology.
Te Wainui Witika-Park (Te Ātiawa, Waikato-Tainui), Catalyst IT: I am a Wahine Māori with low vision, working as a Software Developer at Catalyst IT, based in Te Whanganui a Tara (Wellington). I am passionate about accessibility and Te Ao Māori and this guides me in my work that I do within the technology world. The team that I work in at Catalyst focuses on preserving collections using digital technologies. The main software that I work on is Koha, an open-source library management system started here in Aotearoa and used all over the world.
Ani Sharland (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Maru ki Hauraki), Te Kotahitanga o Te Ātiawa Trust: I have been at Te Kotahitanga o Te Atiawa Trust as their Pourangahau Tiaki Taonga for 2 years. My background in developing heritage collections in public libraries has helped me to create a library and archive for the Trust. Gathering and preserving whānau stories and whakapapa has been one of my passions for over 40 years. My focus is to look for opportunities to preserve knowledge and provide access to Te Ātiawa uri. Kia puāwai mai ai" (let opportunities flourish).
What happens when your metahuman decides to overshare about their existential crisis? Or when one of your AI workers decides to unionise mid-interview? What about a disgruntled virtual character that decides it’s done talking to your visitors?
In MOD.'s 2025 exhibition, FOREVER, we explore speculative “death tech” through Eterna.Life, a fictional company that invites visitors to a near-future careers opportunity. Here, AI-driven characters interview visitors for roles like consciousness uploading specialist or cryogenics technician. These interactions challenge visitors to consider the ethical and personal implications of speculative technologies and living beyond death.
Designing Eterna.Life was an experimental and iterative process. It’s one thing to develop AI characters in theory, but quite another to place them in a dynamic, live gallery space where visitors interact unpredictably. The lack of control was thrilling and confronting, forcing us to embrace failure and adapt as we tested, ensuring the visitor journey remained inclusive, accessible, and thought-provoking.
This talk will cover the risks and rewards of relinquishing control to AI in cultural spaces. MOD. and design studio Junior Major will share how we prototyped and refined this experience, blending humour and ethical complexity into an immersive exhibit. A demo of the AI interviews will showcase how this project redefines cultural engagement with emerging technologies.
This isn’t another talk about AI’s theoretical merits or potential fears - this is about putting AI to work in the real world, live, in an exhibition context, and with all the unpredictability and humour that entails.
Tom Siddall, Junior Major. Tom has a long history of working with museums, architects, and artists around the world. He has created award-winning experiences in Dubai, Singapore, the US, Europe, and Australia for clients such as Atlassian, Museums Victoria, Museum of Sydney, Australian National Maritime Museum, Dallas Love Field Airport, Conrad Shawcross, Google Creative Lab, and ACMI - projects such as an interactive sporting gallery, a reactive digital flip-dot sculpture, an immersive installation about migratory birds, and an intergalactic online experience. Tom thrives on the challenge of transforming seemingly impossible ideas into reality.
Claudia von der Borch is Exhibitions Lead at MOD., a future-focused museum in Adelaide. She drives the development of engaging and innovative exhibitions through impactful design. Exhibitions worked on closely by Claudia have received national and international recognition. Prior to this role, Claudia consulted on heritage and online engagement projects, and engaged in marketing, programming and collection-based roles in the GLAM sector. Claudia is currently Vice-President of the AMaGA SA branch and has recently completed her fellowship as a George Alexander Fellow with the International Specialised Skills Institute investigating immersive exhibition design techniques.
Connecting Worlds with Words was the first collaborative project among Auckland Live, Fed Square in Melbourne, and Bunjil Place in the City of Casey, Australia. Each venue, equipped with a large LED screen in a central public space, harnessed technology and creativity to deliver a hybrid spoken word event, aiming to bridge isolation and foster connection amid COVID-19 lockdowns. Over a year, the venues collaborated with local spoken word collectives, inviting audiences to engage with a timely theme of connection. The event’s technical development leveraged Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) and NDI protocols to enable seamless live-streaming, with Fed Square as the central hub, supporting an international online audience. Despite logistical challenges, including lockdowns, the project successfully connected 12 poets, 3 spoken word collectives, 3 cities, 27 operational staff and 993 total audience members. Coordinated marketing, innovative video promotions, and a unified brand identity further amplified outreach. Though it concluded after the pilot year, Connecting Worlds with Words showcased the transformative power of digital collaboration, offering a model for sustainable, cross-border engagement that emphasises connection and community in an uncertain world
Angela Barnett is a Melbourne-based media artist and creative producer with over five years of experience at Bunjil Place, where she coordinates outdoor screen events, exhibitions, workshops, and interactive installations. She has collaborated with festivals such as the Melbourne International Film Festival and Melbourne Queer Film Festival, fostering a diverse screen culture.
Previously, Angela was Artist in Residence at Cube 37 and a recipient of the Australia Council’s EPIC grant. Her accolades include the ATOM Award for Best Multimedia, commissions from Experimental Playground, and a pivotal role in founding the Gertrude Street Projection Festival.
Ben McCarthy is a Melbourne-based screen programmer and creative producer specialising in innovative screen-based projects and interactive media. With over ten years of experience, he is the Multimedia Producer at Fed Square, curating events, exhibitions, and interactive installations that engage audiences and foster community connection.
Ben has collaborated with major festivals like the Melbourne International Film Festival, Melbourne International Games Week, and Birrarangga Film Festival to deliver inclusive programming. A former Multiplatform Programmer at Nickelodeon ANZ and Board member of Channel 31, Ben also advises RMIT’s Master of Media program, shaping future media professionals.
15:30 Afternoon Tea
16:50 Day 1 Closing
17:00 NDF Connect
Concurrent sessions at a glance
While registering for your NDF25 ticket, you’ll need to select which presentations you’d like to see during the concurrent sessions. Here’s an overview of the concurrent sessions for both days.
Cade Diehm is the founder of the New Design Congress, an international research organisation forging a nuanced understanding of technology's role as a social, political and environmental accelerant. He studies, writes, consults and speaks regularly on topics such as digital power structures, privacy, information warfare, resilience, internet economies and the digitisation of cities.
With a background in information security, interface politics and digital systems, Cade and his team at New Design Congress work tirelessly to tease out and weave threads that can be pulled together to build a truly hopeful future.
Cade has collaborated with organisations across the world, including Signal, Google, Mozilla, Bauhaus Earth, Webrecorder, Open Archive, Superbloom Design, Furtherfield, C/ O Berlin, Art Sonje Center, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, the International Institute for the Environment and Development, the European Commission, the World Health Organization, the London College of Communication, Protocol Labs, the Deutschland Bundestag Prototype Fund, the Center for Digital Resilience, the Algorithmic Transparency Institute and many others.
Cade resides in Berlin with his partner and two Shiba Inus, Ripley and Kodak.
