Mutek Forum Returns with Symbiotic Frequencies: 100+ Creators, Innovators, and Practitioners Shaping the Future of Digital Creation

MUTEK Forum Returns with Symbiotic Frequencies: 100 Creators, Innovators, and Practitioners Shaping the Future of Digital Creation

 MUTEK Forum, a gathering for bold ideas in digital creativity, returns August 26-28 with a three-day programme of radical imagination and curated exchange, showcasing and critically exploring creative practices across research, creation, and interdisciplinary collaboration. MUTEK Forum brings together artists, studios, institutions, researchers, technology professionals, digital experts, and curators, nurturing interconnection between live audiovisual performance, electronic music, artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR), ecology, media art, and design.

Running alongside the Forum, the 2026 edition also marks a significant expansion of MUTEK Market, MUTEK's marketplace for digital creativity, with a dedicated trajectory and space for curated 1:1 matchmaking and ecosystem-building between creatives and delegates from around the world.

This year's edition moves to an exciting new home: Atrium et Studio-Théâtre des Grands Ballets and Édifice Wilder - Espace danse, two adjoining flagship performing arts venues in the heart of the city’s cultural ecosystem.

SYMBIOTIC FREQUENCIES

Existing boundaries between disciplines, cultures, and intelligences are dissolving, giving way to multiple, overlapping networks that cut across technology, climate, geopolitics, and art. AI, algorithmic automation, and digital systems are fundamentally reshaping how we sense, know, and relate to the world, transforming not just our tools, but the material conditions of existence itself. As these systems evolve at unprecedented speed, the most pressing question is no longer what technology can do, but what we want it to become.

MUTEK Forum 2026 brings together artists, technologists, researchers, and cultural practitioners who are actively shaping that answer. Under the theme Symbiotic Frequencies, we explore intelligence in its broadest sense: computational, physical, relational, ecological, and the role of creative practice in building more ethical, sustainable, and human-centered technological futures.

“Symbiotic Frequencies is an invitation to listen differently, to recognize that the vibrations shaping our world, sonic, algorithmic, ecological, are entangled relationships to be cultivated. From living systems and biosignals to the many forms intelligence can take, this year’s Forum explores the places where bodies, technologies, and ecosystems are increasingly, inextricably linked. What becomes possible when artists, technologists, and communities truly attune themselves to each other? What does it mean to create, think, and listen together in a world whose interdependencies we are only beginning to understand?”

— Sarah Mackenzie, Director of MUTEK Forum and Creative Development

DAY 1: Storytelling: Expanding Realities, presented by the Canada Media Fund (CMF)

Presented by the Canada Media Fund (CMF), the first day of the Forum turns storytelling inside out, asking what narrative becomes when it is felt, inhabited, and collectively lived. The day explores how stories emerge from the entangled relationships between bodies, technologies, communities, and imaginaries, opening an invitation to the frontiers of immersive and screen-based storytelling and centering embodiment, accessibility, and distribution as creative imperatives.

Loretta Sarah Todd, Founder and Creative Director of IM4 Lab, an immersive media lab dedicated to Indigenous storytelling and the cultivation of the next generation of Indigenous media makers, delivers the opening address. Her work has long placed Indigenous voices and worldviews at the center of screen culture. Responding to the Forum theme, her talk invites a critical reflection on who gets to tell the stories and how.

The day will be punctuated with talks and performance lectures from some of the most exciting voices in digital culture, including community and media channel New Models (Caroline Busta and Lil Internet), artist and filmmaker Zach Blas, and media alchemist Navid Navab, recipient of this year's Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica in Digital Musics. French filmmaker Lou Fauroux offers a focused moment of cinematic dialogue with a screening of her film What Remains, Genesis. A speculative fiction set in 2048, where a digital immortality software developed by Google is hijacked by hackers who democratize its access, weaving together AI, techno-capitalism, collective resistance, and queer futurity.

For the third year in a row, MUTEK is proud to partner with the Indigenous Screen Office (ISO) on Indigenous Immersions, a programming trajectory featuring a selection of activities that highlight Indigenous new media creators, artists, and creative technologists across the full three days of MUTEK Forum. As part of this trajectory, multidisciplinary artist and Sobey Art Award nominee Caroline Monnet, presented by the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) will deliver an artist talk and Q&A moderated by Mojeanne Behzad, curator at MAC.

A handful of sessions explore innovations and topics pertinent to digital creativity. Entangled Spaces: Art, Technology and the Future of Cultural Engagement, presented by Communicating the Arts, brings together artists, studios, and cultural institutions to share concrete examples of what emerges when creativity and technology intersect in unexpected ways. Hosted by Corinne Estrada (Communicating the Arts) and Teresa Retzer (Mesh Festival, Switzerland), the session features presentations from Daniel Iregui (Iregular Studio), Nicolas S. Roy (Dpt.), and filmmaker, activist, and curator Tracy Rector, whose work centers on an unsanctioned digital intervention that brought together seventeen Indigenous artists to reframe the narratives of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

XN Québec will co-present a series of case studies presentations, highlighting the future of immersive technologies. Hosted by Vanessa Costa from TIFF: The Market (Producer, Innovation), New Horizons: What’s Next in Immersive is a series of case study presentations, showcasing the most exciting projects and innovations in the industry. Immersive Iterations: Storytelling Across Platforms, hosted by Josh Goldblum of community conversation experiential design series Futurespaces, features Samantha King (VIVE Arts), Denys Lavigne (OASIS Immersion) and audiovisual artist Line Katcho in a panel exploring how immersive works can be built with distribution and adaptability in mind from the start across domes, headsets, and immersive venues.

Presented with SODEC, 10 years of Atelier Grand Nord: Pushing the Boundaries of XR Creation celebrates a decade of francophone immersive creation with a retrospective and forward-looking conversation moderated by Éloi Champagne (National Film Board of Canada).

MUTEK is also partnering with Ic3y Mag for their event series Listening Room to present an immersive listening session of Jump Source’s long-awaited album Fold, followed by a conversation dissecting the collaborative process behind the album led by Nyshka Chandran from Resident Advisor.

At the multidisciplinary production house DASA, Swiss-French composer and sound artist Noémi Büchi will lead a hands-on masterclass examining how digital tools can serve as compositional, performative, and organizational environments for live electronic music. The day also includes Collective interactivity, a workshop offered by Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) exploring collective interactive practices in immersive environments, taking place within the SAT dome for an enveloping, hands-on experience.

DAY 2: Technology: Future Interfaces

Day 2 of MUTEK Forum moves into the architecture of the tools themselves, asking what it means to create, think, and sense alongside intelligent systems. The day examines the interfaces, machines, and infrastructures reshaping creative practice with a critical lens on sustainability, ethics, and the question of intelligence itself. From biosignals and generative AI to Indigenous data sovereignty and hyper-imaging, the sessions trace a field in transformation, probing not just what these tools make possible, but what kinds of relationships, responsibilities, and futures they call into being.

Presented by Epson, Into the Visuals: Where Installation Meets Live Experience brings together visual artist Mika Oki, Moment Factory, and Kamil Nawratil (Volvox Labs) in a series of project presentations moderated by Behnaz Fard (Epson), examining how installation-based approaches influence live performance through expanded storytelling, spatial design, and sensory experience.

A thread running through the day explores living matter, body-nature relationships, and the limits of intelligence itself. In their lecture-performance Cosmosapience: Embodying our Planetary Mind, Southern California-based interdisciplinary artists and researchers Katie Hofstadter and Memo Akten (Superradiance Center for Entangled Intelligence and Planetary Consciousness) weave together ancient biotechnologies, poetry, dance, and ritual, with artificial intelligence and generative systems to interrogate what intelligence really means, and what we risk losing when we look for it in the wrong places. Other presentations include Claire L. Evans and creative collective Elsewhere in India (Murthovic and Thiruda).

A handful of sessions examine the most pressing questions at the intersection of AI, creativity, and the body, tracing how biosignals, machine perception, and generative systems are reshaping artistic practice and raising urgent questions around authorship, agency, and collaboration with non-human intelligences. Jackson 2bears (OTEKH Labs), member of the Abundant Intelligences research team, presents Land-Based AI Ecologies, drawing from Indigenous research-creation projects centered on reciprocity, data sovereignty, and community governance, followed by a conversation with Ceyda Yolgörmez (Abundant Intelligences). Developed in partnership with MozFest, Tuning the Machine: Power, Protocol, and Creative AI is a panel grounded in concrete solutions: licensing, frameworks, open protocols, and transparency tools, examining what fair and just AI actually looks like in practice for music and digital creativity. Featuring Margaret McGuffin (Music Publishers Canada), Sean Power (Musical AI), Jesse McKee (221A), and esteemed music lawyer Elizabeth Moody (Granderson Des Rochers, LLP), who has built her practice around helping clients navigate the AI space and counsels generative voice and audio AI companies, right holders on AI strategies, and organizations including Fairly Trained, Audioshake, and Sureel AI. This panel is moderated by Mozilla Festival Director Zeina Abi Assy.

Presented by the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), a panel on biosignals in digital arts brings together practitioners from neuroscience, immersive technologies, and generative AI to compare methods, ambitions, and limits and to open a public conversation on the ethical questions that come with biometric data in creative contexts. Moderated by Jean-Michaël Celerier (SAT), this panel features Anouk Ethier (Noukii), Karim Jerbi (Université de Montréal), and multidisciplinary artists Jacqueline Beaumont and Erin Gee. A discussion panel on location-based entertainment (LBE), IP, and interdisciplinary creation will feature Jordana Leigh (Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts) and Myriam Achard (PHI).

Moment Factory will present a workshop, Generative AI for 3D Projection Mapping: From Concept to Canvas, a hands-on ComfyUI workshop presented by Alexis Doyon-Lacroix, Vinh Truong, Conner Tozier, and facilitated by Anne-Célia Waddell, moving from an innovation case study rooted in real-world architectural content workflows to a live projection onto a physical maquette.

DAY 3: Sound: Ecologies of Listening, presented by DistroKid

Day 3 of MUTEK Forum 2026, presented by DistroKid, turns toward sound as both medium and metaphor, tracing the deep entanglements between sound system culture, quantum physics, immersive technologies, and the politics of who gets to build and move through sonic space. This year, the Forum deepens its commitment to sound system culture through a dedicated programming track developed in collaboration with MORPH, a queer and femme-led collective reclaiming sound system culture and technical spaces, alongside the Sound System Lab, a showcase highlighting Montreal's vibrant community of builders and operators.

From Kingston to the World: Jamaican Sound System Culture is a conversation with Jamaican legendary sound system builder and elder Uncle Ronnie (Ronald Jarrett), hosted by D’Ari Lisle (Darkspark Creative Society). The next generation of sound system builders and sonic explorers takes the stage: Fait Poms, Salima Punjani, and Afrosonic Innovation Lab share the projects and ideas carrying the tradition into new territory.

A three-part trajectory weaving together quantum physics, deep listening, and the future of immersive audio opens with a keynote, Correlated States: Listening Between Certainties, by sound artist France Jobin and quantum physicist Alexandre Blais. A panel on Quantum Listening then brings together artists and scientists, including artist Kara-Lis Coverdale, media arts curator Eva Fischer (soundframe / Civa Festival, Vienna), and poet, performer, and healer Rena Anakwe (NEW INC), to ask what it truly means to listen, and how conditions of uncertainty can reshape creative practice. The trajectory closes with Sonic States, a panel on the current landscape of immersive audio technologies and practices, featuring Laura-June Clarke (4DSOUND, MONOM), Dr. Lea Luka Sikau (ZKM), and Myriam Boucher (Université de Montréal).

Other sessions will examine key topics for the electronic music industry, including care, capital, and accountability in electronic music, presented in partnership with Debaser, and activities examining sustainable alternatives for music. Frequency and Footprint: Rethinking the Live Experience opens with an introduction by Sergio Parra Aguilera (Canadian Live Music Association), offering a first look at the Climate Contingency Roadmap project, followed by a panel with Chloé Gatignol (Courts-Circuits), Samantha Melnyk (KORG), and Amber Mundinger (L-Acoustics), moderated by Pauline Bourdon (Soliphilia). The session examines whether innovation and sustainability can truly align as the technologies powering live performances evolve at an unprecedented pace, while pointing toward concrete solutions.

The Forum comes to a close with the Canadian premiere of A Sexual History of the Internet. LA and NYC-based artist and technologist Mindy Seu (Cyberfeminism Index) delivers an interactive lecture-performance based on her eponymous book, examining the reciprocal relationship between technological development and sexuality to reveal ubiquitous and unexpected origins of our digital tools.

The day also features a worldbuilding workshop by award-winning XR filmmaker Paisley Smith, presented by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), while sound artist and instrument-maker Evicshen will host a hands-on contact mic building workshop at DASA. World Creation Studio presents a special edition of final-bounce hosted by multidisciplinary artist Malte Leander, featuring international MUTEK artists invited to share unreleased material, demos, and works-in-progress, spotlighting what is currently emerging in Montréal's electronic music scene.

INDUSTRY NETWORKING

MUTEK Forum 2026 creates dedicated space for connection throughout the three days, bringing together speakers, delegates, and attendees across a series of cocktails and industry meetups. Evening cocktails are hosted in partnership with the Indigenous Screen Office and XN Québec, with a closing cocktail rounding out the final evening.

On August 27, Derivative welcomes the TouchDesigner community and those interested in interactive media art to a meetup with presentations, knowledge sharing, and discussions focused on the TouchDesigner visual development platform. On August 28, La Piscine is co-organizing a meetup that will bring together professionals from the cultural and creative industries to explore how sustainability can evolve from a constraint into a genuine lever for business growth and innovation. Through case studies, practical demonstrations, and a collaborative workshop, participants will leave with actionable strategies and new professional connections.

EXPANDED MUTEK MARKET

This year, MUTEK Market returns from August 26 to 28, in a significantly expanded format, now fully integrated across the festival as one of its defining features. MUTEK Market includes a dedicated B2B space at Wilder Building - Espace danse, in the heart of the Quartier des spectacles, hosting daily curated 1:1 meetings between international delegates and Québec and Canada creatives, alongside three days of conferences, case studies, performance lectures, and industry cocktails as part of MUTEK Forum.

Studios, companies, and export-ready artists based in Québec working in digital arts, immersive media, music technology, and related fields are invited to submit their interest in participating in the MUTEK Market. Decision-makers, presenters, and curators outside of Québec from festivals, museums, cultural institutions, performing arts venues, public spaces, cities, and municipalities are also invited to submit their interest.