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Connected Minds Artist-in-Residence

Call for Proposals

Connected Minds Artist-in-Residence 2024-2025 

Sensorium: Centre for Digital Art and Technology, in partnership with Connected Minds: Neural and Machine Systems for a Healthy, Just Society, seeks applications for our inaugural Connected Minds Artist-in-Residence.

Situated in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) at York University, Sensorium is an interdisciplinary research centre for creative inquiry and experimentation at the intersection of the media arts, performance, and digital culture. As an incubator for artistic research and community-led co-creation, Sensorium serves as a catalyst for examining how diverse media platforms enable multi-sensory perception and embodied experience, along with new modes of social and political engagement. 

Based at York University and Queen’s University, Connected Minds is a research program funded by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund and 50+ industry, hospital, and community partners. Connected Minds explores how new technologies are revolutionizing society, creating a ‘techno-social collective’ where humans and intelligent machines are deeply interconnected. While such advances present exciting opportunities, they also present significant risks, especially for vulnerable populations. The Connected Minds Program envisions a world where breakthroughs in technology promote social health and justice for all, with special focus on the Indigenous Peoples of Canada. Our teams pursue research and co-create technologies that optimize the benefits and mitigate the risks of the new techno-social collective. This work supports our larger goal of developing a global hub of critical transdisciplinary scholarship on configurations of social power and systemic barriers that underpin advances in emerging technologies.

Artist in Residence Program

The Connected Minds Artist-in-Residence program has three central aims:

  1. To support artist-researchers from equity deserving groups who are using non-traditional forms of knowledge creation to actively address social impacts of emerging technologies on diverse communities and drive ethical technology development;
  2. To maximize the transdisciplinary impact of artistic methodologies on the study of the techno-social collective across the Connected Minds Program and its three anchoring pillars: Intelligent Technologies; Neuroscience, Society;
  3. Through artistic knowledge mobilization, to raise the international awareness of the innovative and community-engaged research undertaken through the Connected Minds program.

Through their period of residency with Sensorium and Connected Minds, the selected artist will be invited to develop a set of research-creation experiments that critically engage with ethical issues embedded in disruptive, emergent, and/or intelligent technologies (artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual and augmented reality, etc.). This engagement will include considering how issues of equity shape the design of new technologies and their impacts on diverse communities.  The selected artist will hold a combination of talks, workshops, and studio/lab visits for members of the Connected Minds community to share skills and knowledge emerging from their practice and critical inquiry. At the culmination of their residency the artist will produce a body of work to be exhibited publicly in a creative format suitable to the nature of the research (e.g., performance, screening, installation).

The Artist-in-Residence will:

  • Actively collaborate with students and faculty within Connected Minds and produce opportunities for training and engagement in the form of workshops, talks, studio/lab visits, etc. regularly throughout their residency (minimum one event every two months);
  • Build opportunities for exchange across the three pillars of Connected Minds – Neuroscience, Intelligent Technologies, and Society – into their residency plan;
  • Be on-site at a designated York University research space a minimum of one day per week on a regular basis (with the exception of research-related travel periods);
  • Do studio/lab visits at Queen’s University at least twice during their residency;
  • Prepare a body of work for public exhibition at the culmination of the residency;
  • Participate in Sensorium and Connected Minds programming;
  • Meet agreed upon deadlines as set out in the residency plan.

We are open to artists working in any medium. The successful applicant will have a demonstrable track record in research-based creative practice and at least two years of experience training or mentoring emerging artists. Both individual artists and collectives may apply, however the overall residency stipend will remain the same. Proposals will be adjudicated based on feasibility and alignment with the Connected Minds mandate. We especially encourage and prioritize applications from artists who identify as Indigenous and/or as a member of another equity-deserving group, as well as research that addresses experiences of underrepresented communities – Indigenous Peoples of Canada (i.e., First Nations, Inuit, Métis, or registered to a US tribe whose homelands straddle the colonial Canada/US border); African, Caribbean and Black individuals; racialized individuals; persons with disabilities; women; 2SLGBTQIA+; French linguistic minority). Persons of all nationalities are welcome to apply, however we are not able to cover relocation expenses. This opportunity is not open to current York or Queen’s University students or faculty. While Sensorium will administer the residency, the artist-in-residence may be affiliated with more than one Connected Minds-affiliated research centre at York and Queen’s.

The residency can be 6 months or 1 year in duration (depending on the nature of the proposed project), ideally taking place between September 1, 2024 and August 30, 2025, with the dates of the final exhibition to be negotiated with the artist-in-residence.

The Artist-in-Residence will receive:

  • Stipend – $60,000 + benefits for 1 year residency, or $30,000 + benefits for 6-month residency
  • Research, Materials, Community Engagement Budget – $8,500 for 1 year residency, or $4250 for

6-month residency

  • Shared research space and assistance
  • Access to York University Libraries
  • Curatorial support for exhibition
  • Photo and video documentation of their exhibition

To apply please submit applications as a single PDF to Sensorium Coordinator Helen Lee at helen2@yorku.ca by June 28, 2024, 12:00pm EST.

In your application please include:

  • A letter of interest (1 page)
  • CV
  • Project proposal (1000 words max.)
  • Portfolio including 3 examples of recent research-creation work
  • 1 letter of reference (appraisal of artistic work and ability to work with student trainees and participate productively in a collaborative, transdisciplinary setting)
  • Budget for Research, Materials, and Community Engagement, including any external funds you may bring to the residency

There will be a drop-in information session for interested applications on Zoom on June 11, 11:00am-12:00pm EST. Contact helen2@yorku.ca (Helen Lee) to RSVP to the session and receive the zoom link.