John Desnoyers Stewart presents Speculative Futures: Machines, Space, and Temporal Imagination during the 2025 SCI_ART Symposium at UBC Okanagan.
What: SCI_ART: After the Data/Cultural Climate Futures Symposium
Who: Artists and researchers from Canada and the European Union, hosted by UBC Okanagan's Critical Future Studio/Lab
When: October 7 and 8, 2026
Where: UBCO's Critical Future Studio/Lab, Innovation Precinct Annex 1, 3505 Spectrum Court, Kelowna
Having artists dialogue with scientists creates opportunities for discovery that neither field could achieve alone.
SCI_ART 2026: After the Data/Cultural Climate Futures brings together artists and scientists from Canada and the European Union to examine some of the most pressing environmental questions of our time.
Now in its fourth year, this symposium takes place from October 2 to 5 in Vancouver, and on October 7 and 8 in the Okanagan.
The projects created by these collaborations invite audiences to engage with climate and environmental issues through new perspectives that combine scientific knowledge with artistic imagination, explains Dr. Suzie Currie, UBCO's Vice-Principal and Associate Vice-President, Research and Innovation .
"This symposium demonstrates how collaboration across disciplines can generate new ways of thinking about the challenges facing our world," says Dr. Currie. "These partnerships can help make complex environmental issues more accessible while opening new avenues for creative and scientific inquiry."
Through artist residencies, performances and public presentations of artwork, talks and collaborative research activities, participants will investigate how creative practice can contribute to environmental understanding and action.
The symposium is made possible by the support of the European Union and the Embassies and High Commissions of Austria, Croatia, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia. It is organized and hosted in Vancouver and Kelowna by the Critical Future Studio/Lab within UBC Okanagan's Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies .
By embedding artists within scientific and institutional frameworks, this symposium creates opportunities to build relationships, foster new collaborations and develop creative projects, says Dr. Megan Smith , associate professor and Director of the Critical Future Studio/Lab and SCI_ART 2026 organizer.
"Addressing environmental change requires perspectives from many disciplines and communities," says Dr. Smith. "SCI_ART creates space for artists, scientists, policymakers and the public to exchange knowledge and explore shared questions about resilience, sustainability and the futures we want to build."
Building on previous editions, SCI_ART 2026 strengthens relationships among research institutions, cultural organizations and communities across Canada and Europe.
Through international dialogue and interdisciplinary exchange, it positions art not simply as a way to communicate science, but as a collaborative means of creating knowledge, informing policy and imagining more resilient futures.
Public events will explore how artists and researchers sense environmental change, undertake situated fieldwork and use technologies such as satellite imaging, remote sensing, artificial intelligence, computation and immersive media to make complex systems perceptible.
Discussions will also examine artistic research as a way of rehearsing possible futures, preserving the knowledge generated through interdisciplinary experimentation and bringing creative and scientific perspectives into environmental policy, diplomacy and public decision making.
On Wednesday, October 7, the Austrian Embassy Ottawa has partnered with UBC and SCI_ART to present a free one-hour selection of award-winning works from the Ars Electronica Animation Festival 2025 in the University Theatre, followed by a panel discussion and presentations on October 8.
For symposium details and event registration, visit sci-art.ca .
